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Match Group and Google reach an interim compromise over app payments | Taylor Hatmaker | 2,022 | 5 | 20 | Match Group, the parent company of dating apps Tinder, Hinge and OkCupid, is getting along better with Google, just by a little bit. On Friday, Match withdrew its request for a temporary restraining order against the company, which it in its mobile app marketplace. Match filed an antitrust lawsuit against the search giant earlier this month over the company’s restrictions on Android in-app payments, which drive app users toward remaining in its mobile ecosystem. The company filed the temporary restraining order request a day after suing Google. Match cited a handful of “concessions” from Google in its decision to withdraw the restraining order request, including assurances that its apps would not be rejected or deleted from the Google Play Store for providing alternative payment options. The company will also place up to $40 million aside in an escrow account in lieu of paying fees to Google directly for Android app payments that happen outside of Google Play’s payment system, arguing that those fees are “illegal under federal and state law.” The escrow account will remain in place while the case awaits its day in court. Match’s lawsuit is the most recent example of app makers objecting to Google and Apple’s practice of extracting steep fees for in-app payments. Developer frustration around the issue boiled over two years ago when Epic Games sued Apple for antitrust violations, a case that didn’t result in a straightforward victory for either side but did force Apple to allow developers to offer their users alternative payment options. |
A third straight week of tech layoffs in the books | Natasha Mascarenhas | 2,022 | 5 | 20 | market was , but what about the actual workers behind the tech companies they’ve backed? Reluctantly, we’re writing a for , because once again, there have been reductions across stages and sectors. Over the past month, public and private tech companies have been announcing mass layoffs across sectors. Employees from Section4, Carvana, DataRobot, Mural, Robinhood, On Deck, Thrasio, MainStreet and Netflix have been impacted by the workforce reductions. Some bigger companies are instituting hiring freezes, such as Twitter and Meta, or announcing a shift in strategy, such as Uber. As has been our mantra while reporting on the layoffs sweeping the tech industry: . Especially for the U.S.-based tech employees, layoffs don’t just mean a loss of income — they mean a medically dangerous loss of healthcare. Let’s take a look at which companies announced reductions this week. After layoffs hit Netflix’s content arm a few weeks ago, 150 more primarily U.S.-based employees , plus 70 other employees in the animation division. A Netflix representative wrote in an emailed statement, “As we explained on earnings, our slowing revenue growth means we are also having to slow our cost growth as a company.” Netflix reported revenue of $7.87 billion for the first quarter of 2022 and a significant loss of 200,000 subscribers. Contractors were also impacted by these layoffs, but the number of affected workers in that designation is unclear. TechCrunch asked Netflix about reports that staff running diverse social channels like Strong Black Lead, Golden, Most and Con Todo were laid off, but Netflix said that the company decided not to renew contracts with certain agencies it used to recruit contractors. Still, it doesn’t feel great to see queer people and people of color losing their jobs, which helped Netflix cater to these audiences. Less than a year ago, Picsart raised $130 million from SoftBank, putting the visual creator tools startup into unicorn territory with a valuation exceeding $1 billion. A leaner, hipper version of Adobe, things seem to have taken a downturn for Picsart, which of its staff this week, affecting 90 people. Other SoftBank-backed companies like , which also became a unicorn last year, just conducted layoffs. When Alex Wilhelm last covered Picsart, that the company was expected to go public — that still hasn’t happened, which may be a clue into what’s going on at the company to precipitate such cuts. Cars24, a marketplace for used cars last valued at $3.3 billion by its venture capital investors, cut 600 jobs — or 6% of its entire workforce — this week. The Series G startup had just raised a $400 million round, making the reduction more about runway extension than lack of ability to pay the bills. As our own Manish Singh reports, Cars24 is one of many Indian startups that fired people in the last few weeks. Employees from Vedantu, Unacademy, Meesho, OkCredit, Trell, Furlenco and Lido have also cut several roles, he says. Marketplace startups, such as Cars24, feel especially vulnerable during a downturn. Consumer spending habits can get extremely fickle, which means that demand may decline while supply stays consistent or even grows. Balancing the two sides is the biggest art for any marketplace startup, but it becomes especially difficult to predict stability in revenue when everyone else has hit pause. Esports company Skillz laid off 70 employees, around 10% of the team, earlier this week, the company confirmed to TechCrunch. No executives were impacted by the cuts. “We decided to reorganize our resources and investments to increase our profitable growth and further deliver against our vision of building the competition layer of the internet,” the company said in an emailed statement. “This realignment resulted in changing some of our programs and consequently people on our team as we prioritize our resourcing levels to continue to offer a great player experience and enable more game developers to bring their creations to life.” The company’s statement is ironic; to better support its external community, it is cutting its internal community. The company says it plans to continue hiring in some areas of the business but did not mention which ones. |
One man’s quest to bring back the small phone | Brian Heater | 2,022 | 5 | 20 | In 2017, had settled into a sweet spot between five and six inches. In hindsight, that may well have been wishful thinking. A brief respite aside, it seems that phones have only continued to embiggen, driven by a continued spec war and panel manufacturers like Samsung. Heck, even Steve Jobs famously missed the boat the 3.5-inch a platonic ideal a dozen years ago. “You can’t get your hand around it,” he noted about the four- to five-inch being manufactured by Samsung, “no one’s going to buy that.” Now, the comparison isn’t entirely Apples to apples, as it were. For one thing, hardware makers have gotten much better at shrinking the phone around the screen in the intervening decade. That is to say that a five-inch phone in 2010 is a very different beast than a 2022 version. Even so, big phones are big. They’re so big, in fact, that folding the screen in half seems like the only reasonable exit ramp. Where, , did all the small phones go? The man behind and (who also serves as a Y Combinator partner), is talking things into his own (self-described large) hands. Or, perhaps more accurately, he’s nudging it in someone’s direction in hopes that he doesn’t have to do the famously hard work of launching yet another hardware startup. Noting that the dream of a premium, sub-six-inch Android handset is dying or dead, Migicovsky launched “My hope is that we can gather support from the community and convince Google (ideally) or another Android manufacturer to build this phone,” he writes on the site. Google may well have been the tipping point here, as the company notably abandoned smaller phones with hardware restructuring that gave us the Pixel 6. ok we makin phones now — Eric Migicovsky (@ericmigi) He noted in an email to TechCrunch that he’s already had conversations with hardware companies and launched the site/petition in hopes of getting them to see things his way. “I am busy and happy running Beeper. My goal is to encourage someone else [to] make one.” The petition cites the following bullets as driving factors in returning to a simpler, smaller, safer time: Currently around 20,000, Migicovsky believes 50,000 is the sweet spot for convincing a manufacture to go all in on small. “Just back-of-the-napkin math, but it feels right,” he says. “Probably ~$10 million [non-recurring engineering], means 50K units makes a decent profit at [an] $800 selling price.” One wonders, ultimately, why the proliferation of the smartphone and increased competition have seemingly resulted in homogeneity. Certainly it’s not for lack of trying. When I mention the , he retorts, “I love that they tried! Also the is really interesting, but not great as primary phones.” He adds that — at the very least — he needs a good camera. That certainly doesn’t seem like too much to ask for these days. Launching a new phone company isn’t an impossibility. We’ve got a close eye on Nothing and OSOM’s efforts. But one certainly questions the soundness of doing so in 2022, based entirely on a potentially niche corner of the market. On his site, Migicovsky makes it clear that he’d rather someone else do it. “If no one else makes one I guess I will be forced to make it myself,” he writes, “but I really, really don’t want it to come to that.” |
Salty, subterranean water could relieve world’s lithium shortage | Tim De Chant | 2,022 | 5 | 20 | in lithium-ion battery supplies isn’t cobalt, even though China has a stranglehold on the market, and it’s not nickel, either, despite nickel prices nearly doubling in the past five months. Cobalt can be partially replaced with nickel, nickel can be partially replaced with manganese, and both can be completely replaced with iron phosphate, which is cheap and plentiful. But there’s no substitute for one crucial component of these batteries: Lithium. Today’s lithium mines can’t hope to meet the skyrocketing demand for the next decade and beyond. Spotting an opportunity, startups like Lilac Solutions and Vulcan Energy Resources have leaped into action with new lithium extraction processes that are more efficient and potentially better for the planet. As automakers have fleshed out their electrification plans, they’ve caused an unprecedented rush for lithium. Over the last six months, lithium prices have gone on an epic bull run. It started in January, when prices jumped to $37,000 per metric ton from $10,000 a month earlier, according to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence. Then it got worse in February, with spot prices rising to $52,000 per metric ton before rising again to $62,000 in March. Things have stabilized since then, but prices are still five times above the average price from 2016 to 2020. Large companies of all stripes have been racing to secure supplies. Automakers like and have signed huge contracts, and battery manufacturers and miners are rushing to secure supplies. Last year, for example, a three-way bidding war broke out for Canadian miner Millennial Lithium, which has large reserves in Argentina, and the winning bid ended up more than 40% higher than the initial offer. Yet, those deals probably won’t be enough to fulfill the predicted demand for lithium, based on automakers’ current plans. Benchmark Mineral Intelligence is expecting demand to grow to 2.4 million metric tons in 2030 from less than 700,000 metric tons today. Supply won’t be able to keep up given the current pace of new lithium projects. “By the end of the decade, where we’re at now with the pipeline, we’re going to see significant deficits starting to grow,” said Daisy Jennings-Gray, a senior price analyst at Benchmark. Last year, lithium supply fell short of demand by more than 60,000 metric tons. Jennings-Gray’s firm predicts that the deficit will be over 150,000 metric tons by 2030. To meet demand, Benchmark says that $42 billion will need to be invested in the space by the end of this decade. Without new lithium projects coming online, it’ll likely get worse throughout the 2030s. By 2040, the International Energy Agency lithium demand to be 42 times higher than it is today. “It’s an insane number,” said Jordy M. Lee, a program manager at the Payne Institute for Public Policy at the Colorado School of Mines. What’s more, it might even be too low. “We’ve consistently underestimated how much demand for lithium-ion batteries we’re going to have in the coming years,” he said. As the rise in demand shows no signs of abating, startups have surged into the space, pitching novel techniques to coax the volatile metal out of the earth. |
Carbon capture is headed for the high seas | Harri Weber | 2,022 | 5 | 20 | Unless you live near a port, you probably don’t think much about the tens of thousands of container ships tearing through the seas, hauling some metric tons of stuff each year. Yet these vessels run on some of the there is, spewing than airplanes do in the process. The industry is exploring alternative fuels and electrification to solve the problem for , but in the meantime a Y Combinator-backed startup is gearing up to (hopefully) help decarbonize the that’re already in the water. London-based Seabound is currently prototyping carbon capture equipment that connects to ships’ smokestacks, using a “lime-based approach” to cut carbon emissions by as much as 95%, co-founder and CEO Alisha Fredriksson said in a call with TechCrunch. The startup’s tech works by routing the exhaust into a container that’s filled with porous, calcium oxide pebbles, which in turn “bind to carbon dioxide to form calcium carbonate,”— essentially limestone, per Fredriksson. Though carbon capture has yet to really catch on for ships, Seabound is just one of the companies out to prove the tech can eventually scale. Others, including Japanese shipping firm and Netherlands-based , are developing their own carbon-capture tech for ships, typically utilizing the better-established, approach (which is ). Yet this comparably tried-and-true method demands more space and energy aboard ships, because the process of isolating the CO happens on the vessel, according to Fredriksson. In contrast, Seabound intends to process the CO on land, if at all. When the ships return from their journey, the limestone can be sold as is or separated via heat. In the latter case, the calcium oxide would be reused and the carbon sold for use or sequestration, per Fredriksson, who previously helped build maritime fuel startup . Her co-founder, CTO Roujia Wen, previously worked on AI products at Amazon. Seabound says it has signed six letters of intent with “major shipowners,” and it aims to trial the tech aboard ships beginning next year. To get there, the company has secured $4.4 million in a seed round led by Chris Sacca’s . Several other firms also chipped in on the deal, including Eastern Pacific Shipping, Emles Venture Partners, Hawktail, Rebel Fund and Soma Capital. Beyond carbon capture, another Y Combinator-backed startup is setting out to decarbonize existing ships via a novel battery-swapping scheme. New Orleans-based aims to power electrified ships using shipping container-sized battery packs, which could be recharged through a network of charging stations at small ports. |
TechCrunch+ roundup: Construction tech survey, founder-CEO friction, diversify your cap table | Walter Thompson | 2,022 | 5 | 20 | The technological advances we’ve made over the last few thousand years are stunning, but the construction industry still relies on centuries-old technology. Configuring a robot to mix cement is easy, but delivering a CementTron 3000 to a job site, training employees on its use, and keeping it maintained are not the kinds of disruptions builders are looking for, especially when margins are so thin and experienced workers are hard to find. Even so, investors are backing startups bringing robotics, data management, automation and augmented reality into the construction process. Many major construction firms operate their own R&D divisions, but that hasn’t substantially changed attitudes about adopting new tech: in one survey, more than one-third of respondents who worked in the industry said they are ambivalent about using new tools. Despite their reluctance, growing numbers of construction tech startups are helping builders with bidding, scheduling, modeling software, and, quite frequently, drones. To learn more about , we spoke to five investors: Bryce Durbin/Sophie Alcorn On Tuesday, May 24 at 8:30 a.m. PT/11:30 a.m. ET, I’m hosting a Twitter Space with Silicon Valley immigration lawyer Sophie Alcorn, who writes the each Wednesday. If you have questions about working and living legally in the United States, please join the conversation. To get a reminder before the chat, . Thanks very much for reading: I hope you have a relaxing weekend. Walter Thompson
Senior Editor, TechCrunch+
/ Getty Images Technical founders often recruit a CEO who can fill in gaps in their business experience, but if they cannot build a strong partnership, everyone suffers. Metaphorically, imagine two people in a lifeboat arguing over which direction leads to land. Managing potential points of tension is critical, but founders must be pragmatic: Only choose someone you respect, and be prepared to invest time and energy into cultivating a close relationship, advises Max Schireson, an executive-in-residence at Battery Ventures. Previously, the co-founders of MongoDB hired him to be their CEO. “In the best case, a strong partnership can pioneer new models and build a lasting and impactful company,” says Schireson. Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch As you may have heard, tech companies are having a bit of a . But is it possible that stock sellers have gone overboard when it comes to devaluing these startups so deeply and so quickly? Alex Wilhelm says they have, in large part because “select tech concerns are now worth less than they were before the pandemic, despite having a few years of growth in the bank.” To make his case, he tracked the share price for Okta and found that the identity platform’s share price has rolled back to where it was in early 2019. “It’s also about three times as large,” writes Alex. “But it is now worth less today than it was back then. Chew on that.” / Getty Images Just as a sales team builds and refines its funnel, early-stage founders in fundraising mode can create an investor funnel that will help sustain their company for years to come. Oriana Papin-Zoghbi, CEO and co-founder of women’s health startup AOA Dx, shared her investor breakdown with TC+: “When building an investor funnel, vocalizing what you want is crucial to finding the right investors,” says Papin-Zoghbi. “Finding the right investors is like finding the right team members — you need to be upfront about your expectations and address what you want them to bring to the table.” When video production equipment rental company BoxedUp launched, it initially focused on serving corporate customers who hosted events and conferences. And then, it pivoted: Earlier this year, BoxedUp raised a $2.3 million seed round to scale up its rental marketplace where individuals can rent high-end equipment directly to creators. “We found a $10 billion opportunity where owner-operators are renting things out via Instagram and rental shops are still using really old websites,” said CEO and founder Donald Boone. “Instead of spending $30,000 to buy a camera to rent out one at a time, we could instead create the platform to connect people that have that $30,000 camera,” he told TechCrunch in March. To help other founders replicate his success with BoxedUp’s seed round, he’s shared the unreacted 22-slide pitch deck with TechCrunch+. |
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Endel’s generative soundscapes show up in Sony’s new headphones | Haje Jan Kamps | 2,022 | 5 | 20 | The other day, , including its partnership with “what if Brian Eno was a piece of computer software” app . The company uses really fascinating AI technology to generate soundscapes and music tracks to help your brain do its best work — to help you focus deeper, sleep more easily or to relax you. I spoke with one of Endel’s founders to learn more about the tech and its deal with Sony. “Endel is first and foremost a technology that was built to help you focus, relax and sleep. And the way this technology works, it procedurally generates a soundscape in real time on the spot, on the device. It is personalized to you based on a number of inputs that we collect about you; things like the time of day, your heart rate, the weather, your movement and your circadian rhythms, like how much sleep you got last night,” explains Oleg Stavitsky, CEO and co-founder at Endel. “This technology listens to all of this data, plugs into the algorithm, which creates the soundscape in real time, which allows us to react in real time to the changes in you. Using this technology, we are building an ecosystem of products, so that our soundscapes can follow you everywhere during the day across all these channels and platforms. We are pretty much everywhere at this point; iOS, Android, Apple Watch, Mac or Apple TV, Alexa… you name it.” In reviewing the product I did stumble across a couple of glaring omissions in where it is available: There was of streaming it to my Sonos speakers (the workaround is to install Alexa on Sonos), and the Endel app doesn’t support casting, so . Running the app using earphones, however, creates an intimate and beautiful experience. The audio tracks are Eno-esque in their expansiveness; it’s like a slowly evolving ambient soundtrack to your day. Sitting at my desk, I felt myself focus; a combination of the music and blocking and drowning out distractions. The soundscapes are -based — professional music industry jargon for snippets of sounds, think of them as samples. The app has a huge library of samples and stems, and the algorithm picks the right stems to sequence the audio together. On top of the basic sequencing, the software runs additional adjustments on top. “We have a The company says it’s approached by companies all the time, and have to consider whether partnerships are a cost or a benefit at any given time. It decided to say “yes” to headphones giant Sony, resulting in this collaboration. “Sony’s headphones innovation department approached us. They said we’re working on this new model that will somehow understand the context of where you are, and we want those headphones to proactively activate a certain soundscape,” says I’m frankly very, very skeptical about all these integrations, for a number of reasons. There’s always an opportunity cost. Being a small company, you’re wondering if we should do this. What got me excited about this is that the fundamental idea of Endel is that it’s an always-on soundscape that follows you everywhere during the day. Sometimes you can barely hear it, and sometimes it’s like front and center and it shields you from the rest of the world. I think this idea of headphones that proactively trigger a certain kind of soundscape depending on the context of what’s happening with you is exactly how we envision how our product is used. This is just going to be one huge play button — you press that button, and it listens to your calendar, listens to your heart rate, and it proactively shifts between all of the soundscapes. That’s what we are working toward, and these headphones make that real.” |
As Klarna looks to raise more capital, is it cutting its valuation enough? | Alex Wilhelm | 2,022 | 5 | 20 | circle, and all that was once old is new again. For example, back in the venture days of yore, inside rounds were considered a poor market signal; if a startup could not attract a new lead investor for its next round, what did that say about the company? Last year, that bit of conventional wisdom was inverted by abnormal market conditions and greed; inside rounds became a sign of strength as venture players doubled and at times tripled down on their portfolio companies, looking to get as much capital in the door as they could while the startup was still in its growth phase. And now we’ve returned to the prior state of affairs. Inside rounds are once again signs of things not going perfectly at companies that pursue them. Buy now, pay later outfit Klarna makes the point: The richly valued BNPL giant is looking to take on new capital from existing backers at a discount to its prior valuation. The : The Sweden-based payments company is aiming to raise up to $1 billion from new and existing investors in a deal that could value it in the low $30-billion-range after the money is injected, the people said. That would represent a roughly 30% drop from the previous round. No one likes a down round. They are dilutive, messy and demoralizing. But they are also miles better than not raising money and dying, so companies raise them when required. Our question this morning is not it makes sense for Klarna to raise inside capital at a lower price. As the WSJ notes, the company tried to bump up its valuation slightly before changing course and pursuing a lower price. We know why Klarna is pursuing a down round: necessity. Instead, our question is whether the company is cutting its valuation enough to bring its worth in line with present market pricing. Let’s find out. Thankfully for our needs, there are public BNPL players for us to observe as we work to better understand what the particular fintech revenue is worth. Affirm is public and other players that have BNPL services are also publicly traded. Affirm, being effectively a pure BNPL play, and one that has some market overlap with Klarna, is a perfect floating comp for the Swedish company. And the U.S. company released (Q3 fiscal 2022) results a little over a week ago. This means we have fresh-off-the-vine data from a public company. To understand how well Klarna is repricing itself, let’s do a little bit of data collection and math. We start with the collection side of things (all periods calendar; data via the companies): |
Coca-Cola’s attached bottle cap is rock bottom of hokey greenwashing | Haje Jan Kamps | 2,022 | 5 | 20 | I don’t cover post-IPO companies a lot, and Coca-Cola is def on the list of ones I can generally ignore. But when the company sends out a hand-wringing press release about “for environmental reasons,” I’m sorry, my blood just boils. Don’t get me wrong, better recyclability is a good thing, and fewer bottle caps failing to make their way to recycling? I’m all for it. But the context for this is that in the U.K. — like in the U.S. — bottles are recycled, rather than reused. And they’re recycled at rates that are pitiful. In the rest of Europe, Coca-Cola and other drink manufacturers figured out a functioning system: pay a deposit when you buy a bottle or aluminum can and you get a deposit back when you return it. It works: In Norway, for example, . After being returned, the packaging is reused in some cases, or recycled in others. There’s a bigger reliance on plastic bottles that are sturdy enough that they can be reused 20 times before they are recycled; and beer often comes in reusable glass bottles that are re-used by the breweries, rather than having to melt and re-make the bottles after a single use. In the U.S., in contrast, not only are the bottles not re-used, — the rest goes to landfill. In the U.K. — where Coca-Cola is patting itself on the back about its cap-connecting prowess — . “Coca-Cola Great Britain takes another step towards a World Without Waste for PET bottles,” good heavens, come the hell on. You that this is bollocks, as they would say in the U.K. Congratulations, Coca-Cola, on figuring out some details here, but as a company, you know that there are better solutions, and if you wanted to, you could put systems in place to drive recycling rates to 90%+, rather than the paltry 30-45% we’re seeing in the U.K. and U.S. Yes, the markets are bigger. Yes, cultural differences exist. But if you really gave two shits about the environment, how about you lean on local governments and recycling infrastructure, and help make some difference that actually matters, rather than incremental bullshit that really only serves to entice journalists to ? |
Terra creator Do Kwon faces prosecution in South Korea | Kate Park | 2,022 | 5 | 20 | , the creator of the stablecoin TerraUSD (UST) and its sister token Luna, is facing legal prosecution in South Korea over the collapse of the two coins that wiped out billions of dollars from investors around the world earlier this month. The Seoul Southern District Prosecutors’ Office Friday that it an investigation on Terraform Labs, the organization behind the stablecoin project Terra led by Do Kwon, the case to its Financial and Securities Crime Joint Investigation Team, a special financial crimes unit brought back recently by the newly appointed justice minister Dong-hoon Han, according to . The announcement came a day after five Korea-based crypto investors with combined damages of 1.4 billion won (about $1.1 million) filed criminal complaints against Kwon and his Terraform co-founder Daniel Shin over charges of fraud and other violations of financial regulations. South Korea’s financial authorities that about 280,000 users owned a combined amount of 70 billion Luna in Korea. “The design and issuance of Luna and Terra to attract investors, but the failure to properly inform them about the flaws, and the unlimited expansion of Luna’s issuance amounted to defrauding investors,” a representative from LKB & Partners, the law firm hired by the five investors bringing charges against Terraform Labs. Do Kwon is also facing a tax fine of 100 billion won ($78 million) for evading corporate and income tax payments. UST, which was once one of the most promising stablecoins, depegged from its $1 value last week and has since dropped to $0.079. Rather than being backed by fiat money or real life assets like some other stablecoins, the value of UST is maintained by “burning” its sister token Luna. The price of Luna has plummeted over 99% since last week. first reported Terraform Labs’ in-house legal team has resigned in the wake of the UST and Luna collapse. Terraform Labs is incorporated in Singapore but was registered to operate its business as Terraform Labs Korea in South Korea |
Luminar’s Austin Russell: ‘We probably shouldn’t have existed’ but lidar will drive next-gen safety anyway | Devin Coldewey | 2,022 | 5 | 20 | At TC Sessions: Mobility, Luminar founder and CEO Austin Russell admitted that his now successful company was founded in hubris, but that a skeptical eye during peak lidar hype helped them focus on real markets. “It’s no longer about some theoretical promise — you actually have to show real results, real deliveries, real technology and product. There’s been too many promises made out there that were broken.” In an interview with TechCrunch transportation editor Kirsten Korosec, Russell noted that he, like pretty much everyone else, was convinced early on that self-driving cars were just around the corner. (Quotes have been lightly edited for clarity.) “The reality is, I think that the sheer complexity of solving an end to end autonomous driving problem in urban environments was underestimated in terms of the difficulty by at least a couple orders of magnitude,” he said. “If something is at peak hype cycle, it’s something you should be skeptical about. There was just a massive disconnect between the core engineers behind the actual tech, and leadership at the time, in terms of what was possible.” It was in 2017, he recalled that the company made the decision to pursue other applications for high-performance lidar tech: “It became very clear that the level of requirements for an R&D test platform, versus a true series production vehicle, is a completely different game altogether. The huge roof racks that you see that are $100,000 and a supercomputer in the trunk… it needs to be more like $1,000. And by the way, economies of scale are fundamentally required to be able to build a product, the cost is a significant factor at the end of the day.” The question became not one of raw capability or even just cost, but what would consumers, and by extension OEMs, pay for? Safety. And as it turns out, even top of the line ADAS and collision avoidance tech is seriously lacking right now. “It’s surprising to see how ineffective the current assisted driving systems are just at being able to do basic things like… not letting you smash into the thing right in front of you in your car, right? It sounds like a simple problem, like you wouldn’t even need lidar for that,” he said. “But the reality is it’s a lot more complicated, a lot more difficult than that — to even confidently understand what’s going on around you and come to a safe stop is not a solved problem.” The company has set up numerous examples of these failures — one of which showing a small fake pedestrian being plowed down by an ADAS-equipped car went viral. The combination of robo-taxis being far further out than expected and of ADAS systems as being both desirable and incapable seems to have spurred mainstream automakers to invest heavily in something better. “The transformation is that this is no longer about being an option on a high end, niche vehicle,” he explained. “This is something that has the opportunity to truly go mainstream, in the mass market… Nissan, they were actually showing off crash avoidance scenarios made possible by Luminar lidar; in their case they actually said they want to be able to standardize this type of tech on every vehicle they build by the end of the decade. Which I think is probably faster than any major tech adoption cycle, not for initial adoption, but full standardization across the lineup.” There will of course be Luminar-powered cars out there sooner than that: “Within the next 12 months there’s going to be series production cars that are Luminar equipped that are out there advancing this industry forward,” Russell confirmed. It’s funny to think, however, that a company born out of a plan to obsolete traditional vehicles has become the biggest proponent of its use in those vehicles. But an early recognition of the future of the industry made all the difference. “We probably shouldn’t have existed,” Russell said when asked about taking part in the hype cycle he later distanced himself from. “There’s no reason why any of the Googles, Apples, all the major automakers and other stuff couldn’t have, in some theoretical world, done exactly what we did.” “But the reason why were were able to build this company, this technology, this product and help lead the industry with it is just fundamentally because we had a completely different viewpoint. I guess what’s titled here [i.e. the name of the panel, A Contrarian View on Deploying Autonomy at Scale], the contrarian view,” he said, laughing. As for another contrarian view, the oft-repeated jibe by Elon Musk that lidar is unnecessary and Tesla will get by without it, Russell took it in good humor as well: “If somebody didn’t go out and say, ‘this is a fool’s errand, this shouldn’t exist, we made the right decision and we’re sticking to our guns!’… that’s the irony around all these things. It actually just calls attention to what’s important, because you only say that if you’re really self-conscious about it.” |
Galley Solutions turns kitchen chaos into recipe for streamlined operations | Christine Hall | 2,022 | 5 | 20 | , a food data company providing food operators with technology to make more profitable decisions around their culinary operations, raised $14.2 million in Series A funding. Ian Christopher, COO, started the company with his brother-in-law, Benji Koltai, CEO, in 2017. The food enterprise resource planning tool came out of Koltai’s previous work at , a delivery-only restaurant started by CEO Gagan Biyani and former Google executive chef Nate Keller. Christopher explained that in the early days, there was not a system of record, so much of the work was done in a low-tech environment — spreadsheets or pen and pencil. Koltai, who has food sensitivities, kept getting mislabeled meals and having health reactions. “He went to the culinary team and just said, like, ‘Why are we getting this wrong?’” Christopher told TechCrunch. “We have this source of truth for our recipes, so why isn’t this propagating every other corner of this operation, including the labeling and the allergen information. That was when a sous chef kindly walked him through the chaos that was their kitchen operations.” Koltai, working with Keller, took a recipe-centric approach and coded the first version of Galley, which provides clean recipe data, predictive purchasing, smart inventory and accurate food production planning. Keller is now working with Galley as a part of its customer success program. Galley Solutions website example. Galley Solutions The company’s technology is a kitchen productivity tool that focuses on core recipe data, and the purchasing and inventory aspects stem from that. For example, the carrots for a carrot soup are mapped to real-time vendor items so the kitchen can make better purchasing decisions and more accurate recipe margins. Galley works with companies like DoorDash, Aramark and Chowbotics. The company grew its subscription revenue by 280% from last year and saw a 146% net dollar retention in the first quarter of 2022, Christopher said. It was also at the point in its growth where it was reaching profitability and was close to cash-flow positive when leadership decided to take advantage of its position to aggressively scale. That’s where the Series A comes in. The investment was led by Astanor Ventures and includes participation from existing investor Zetta Venture Partners. This gives the company $20 million in total funding to date. Galley is the latest startup, bringing technology into the kitchen, to receive funding. Earlier this year, we also saw raise $6.5 million for its recipe software. Meanwhile, the new funding enables the company to scale and move into secondary marketplaces to connect supply and demand with a focus on automating the purchasing decision and purchasing activity. “We were able to get to millions of dollars in revenue with two salespeople in our organization, so we have to scale our sales team,” Christopher said. The new funding will also go toward product and engineering. Up next, the company is focusing on sustainability as part of its partnership with Astanor, including sustainability impacts and initiatives around food waste. |
Pintarnya is building a super app for Indonesia’s blue-collar workers | Catherine Shu | 2,022 | 5 | 18 | Indonesia’s 60 million blue-collar workers contribute 20% to its gross domestic product, but they face a lot of uncertainty. Many are forced to bounce from job to job, some fall victim to scam job postings and without a steady employment history, are unable to qualify for financial services, say the founders of . That’s why they created the app, which includes verified job postings and financial services, like loans, for blue-collar workers. The startup announced today it has raised $6.3 million in seed funding led by Sequoia Capital India and General Catalyst. The funding includes a $100,000 grant from Sequoia Spark, a program for women founders in which co-founder Nelly Nurmalasari participated. Pintarnya was launched this May in major Indonesian cities by Nurmalasari, Henry Hendrawan and Ghirish Pokardas. Nurmalasari and Hendrawan were formerly senior executives at lifestyle super app unicorn Traveloka, while Pokardas was a KKR executive who worked with portfolio companies in financial services. In an email, the co-founders told TechCrunch that Nurmalasari also owned a hair salon and as an SME owner, she experienced the pain points of trying to hire, filter and verify applicants for blue-collar jobs. She also saw that they struggled to obtain loans from traditional financial institutions because of their lack of verifiable employment and income history. “The problem became clear when the spillover of her employee’s struggles became hers as these challenges impact employee performance,” they said. “This fortified the vision for a one-stop digital platform that can help in tackling this challenge, to be more employable and access financial services products.” Pintarnya focuses on the food and beverage, hotel and retail sectors, now reopening after COVID lockdowns, and logistics. It plans to expand into other sectors as well and is open to partnering with employers from other industries. Job seekers register and create a profile, then Pintarnya uses that information to recommend job openings based on their requirements, location, skills and other data. Key criteria include the distance between a job and their home, their profile and job history and their self-determined capabilities. The team said that as they build a track record of successfully connecting and placing jobseekers with employers, Pintarnya’s recommendation algorithms will become better by “understanding what other jobseeker traits have a higher propensity of converting their application into a successful job placements.” Variables that it takes into consideration include a jobseeker’s current salary and availability, whether or not they have a photo on their CV and the frequency in which they switch jobs. Pintarnya also works with employers to screen and recruit the most suitable workers for their needs, including online tests. It also verifies job listings’ authenticity to avoid scams and highlights verified job posts using green shield markers. Verification includes checking that a job listing came from a real employer and curating them based on new posts, jobs closest to a jobseeker, jobs for people without experience, salary information and other factors that the platform is experimenting with. “Technology has transformed the kinds of jobs being created in Indonesia, but the process of hiring, especially in the blue collar segments, continue to be broken,” said Sequoia India managing director Abheek Anand in a statement. “Pintarnya’s founding team brings years of exceptional experience building tech and financial products to solving this problem, and we are thrilled to partner with them in their journey to help millions of Indonesians realize their full economic potential.” |
Withings doubles down on the classy with ScanWatch Horizon | Haje Jan Kamps | 2,022 | 5 | 18 | I tried out the brand new ScanWatch about six months ago, and over wearing a tiny iPhone-like device on their wrists. Today, the French company announced a classier-looking version of the same watch, borrowing design language from dive watches of yore. As an avid scuba diver, I’m always a little confused by “dive watches”. Sure, the 10-bar water resistance means that you can go to 100 meters (300 ft), which is deeper than any recreational diver would — but if you’re going to those depths, you’d be well advised to bring a real dive computer along. Still, the style is snazzy; the luminescent watch face and the rotating bezel make it look even less like a smart watch, which is a bonus, if you, like me, care about such things. Carrying a $499 price tag, it isn’t cheap, but with an impressive set of health-focused features and good looks, it’s still reasonably priced. The watch can go up to a month on a single charge, and can run ECGs, heart rate and O sensors, activity tracking and sleep tracking. “The luxury design and robust health features of ScanWatch Horizon are a great complement to the existing ScanWatch line and we are delighted to bring it to the U.S.,” said Mathieu Letombe, CEO of Withings. “Sophisticated health devices that monitor advanced vitals do not have to look like hospital equipment. With the original ScanWatch, the elegant Rose Gold version and now ScanWatch Horizon, we have a style option to meet every fashion preference, social occasion and budget.” Available in blue and green. . Indeed. The watches are available from today, priced at $499, and come with blue or green watch face backgrounds. |
NHTSA probes Tesla Autopilot crash that killed three people | Rebecca Bellan | 2,022 | 5 | 18 | A U.S. federal agency is investigating a crash involving a 2022 Tesla Model S that may have been operating in Autopilot during a crash that killed three people. Autopilot is Tesla’s advanced driver-assistance system (ADAS) that performs automated functions such as steering, accelerating and automatic braking. The accident, which happened earlier this month, occurred in Newport Beach, California when the Tesla hit a curb and slammed into construction equipment, . This is one of more than 30 crashes being investigated by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), all of which . Out of the 35 special crash investigations into Tesla since 2016 involving the electric vehicle company’s ADAS, Autopilot has been ruled out only in three. A total of 14 crash deaths have been reported in those investigations. This month’s collision is the 42nd included in NHTSA’s special crash investigation of ADAS systems like Autopilot, a probe that began in 2016 after a fatal accident in Florida involving another Tesla Model S that had Autopilot activated. While Tesla’s website says that “Current Autopilot features require active driver supervision and do not make the vehicle autonomous,” the company’s branding has been accused of misleading drivers of their vehicles’ capabilities. Simply by choosing names like Autopilot and “full self-driving software,” which is Tesla’s newer, more advanced ADAS, the company lulls drivers into a false sense of security despite the fact that its technology is nowhere near full self-driving. |
For better or for worse: Managing founder-CEO tension inside a startup | Max Schireson | 2,022 | 5 | 18 | hire a bunch of useless salespeople like they have at Oracle?” This was the first of many memorable interactions I had with Eliot Horowitz. Eliot was the founder and CTO of MongoDB, and in late 2010, I was interviewing to come aboard as president. Product-led growth was far from the common buzzword it is today, but the founding team at MongoDB had built a product that developers loved — the very developer love that would drive much of the company’s rapid growth. My topic today isn’t product-led growth, but the relationship between a founder, such as Eliot, and a hired CEO and the key factors necessary for that relationship to succeed. That dynamic was always important, but focusing on it is critical in today’s more volatile, fast-changing technology markets. On the surface, Eliot’s question was about business models and sales hiring. But it went much deeper: Our discussion was a live experiment on how we would work together, getting to the heart of a startup’s decisive partnership between a CEO and a founder. The territory we covered that day included: All of those are valid questions and examples of potential tension points between a technical founder and a new leader brought in from the outside. How a founder and a CEO work through these points of tension could help determine the ultimate success of a company. Lots can go wrong with a startup, but to succeed, two things have to go right: First, the product must fit the market well, which is almost always the domain of the founder(s), and second, the company has to execute successfully, which is sometimes the domain of a hired CEO. In almost every case, the initial product and market vision come from founders. They started the company because they had an insight that something could be done better and an idea of how to do it better. When that idea resonates with a broad audience, you have the kernel of product and market fit. Without that, there is no company. But that initial product-market fit isn’t nearly enough. A company needs funding, a team, and, ultimately, it needs to execute on engineering, sales, customer success and marketing. In some cases, a founder is interested in and has shown an initial aptitude for leading all these areas. In other instances, they don’t, and in these cases, they need a partner to lead the company’s operations. The four years I spent at MongoDB — first as president, then as CEO — were a great experience. The company grew explosively and changed the market for databases and how developers built web applications. Perhaps more importantly, we laid some of the foundations for what would later become a hugely successful cloud business that transformed how enterprises delivered and consumed infrastructure software. We wouldn’t have been able to do that without a strong partnership between the founders and me, particularly with Eliot and Dwight Merriman (founder and initial CEO, who eventually became chairman). Decisions didn’t neatly divide into categories of product for them and operational for me. |
Behold NeuroMechFly, the best fruit fly simulator yet | Devin Coldewey | 2,022 | 5 | 18 | Drosophila melanogaster, the common fruit fly, is in some ways a simple creature. But in others it is so complex that, as with any form of life, we are only scratching the surface of understanding it. Researchers have taken a major step with D. melanogaster by creating the most accurate digital twin yet — at least in how it moves and, to a certain extent, why. , is a “morphologically realistic biomechanical model” based on careful scans and close observation of actual flies. The result is a 3D model and movement system that, when prompted, does things like walk around or respond to certain basic stimuli pretty much as a real fly would. To be clear, this isn’t a complete cell-by-cell simulation, which we’ve seen some progress on in the last few years with much smaller microorganisms. It doesn’t simulate hunger, or vision or any sophisticated behaviors — not even how it flies, only how it walks along a surface and grooms itself. What’s so hard about that, you ask? Well, it’s one thing to approximate this type of movement or behavior and make a little 3D fly that moves more or less like a real one. It’s another to do so to a precise degree in a physically simulated environment, including a biologically accurate exoskeleton, muscles, and a neural network analogous to the fly’s that controls them. To make this very precise model, they started with a CT scan of a fly, in order to create the morphologically realistic 3D mesh. Then they recorded a fly walking in very carefully controlled circumstances and tracked its precise leg movements. then needed to model exactly how those movements corresponded to the physically simulated “articulating body parts, such as head, legs, wings, abdominal segments, proboscis, antennae, halteres,” the latter of which is a sort of motion-sensing organ that helps during flight. Pavan Ramdya (EPFL) They showed that these worked by bringing the precise motions of the observed fly into a simulation environment and replaying them with the simulated fly — the real movements mapped correctly onto the model’s. Then they demonstrated that they could create new gaits and movements based on these, letting the fly run faster or in a more stable way than what they had observed. Pavan Ramdya (EPFL) Not that they’re improving on nature, exactly; they’re just showing that the simulation of the fly’s movement extended to other, more extreme examples. Their model was even robust against virtual projectiles…to a certain extent, as you can see in the animation above. “These case studies built our confidence in the model. But we are most interested in when the simulation fails to replicate animal behavior, pointing out ways to improve the model,” said EPFL’s Pavan Ramdya, who leads the group that built the simulator (and other D. melanogaster–related models). Seeing where their simulation breaks down shows where there’s work to do. “NeuroMechFly can increase our understanding of how behaviors emerge from interactions between complex neuromechanical systems and their physical surroundings,” reads the abstract of the paper . By better understanding how and why a fly moves the way it does, we can understand the systems that underlie it better as well, producing insights in other areas (fruit flies are among the most used experimental animals). And of course if we ever wanted to create an artificial fly for some reason, we would definitely want to know how it works first. While NeuroMechFly is in some ways a huge advance in the field of digitally simulating life, it’s still (as its creators would be the first to acknowledge) incredibly limited, focusing solely on specific physical processes and not on the many other aspects of the tiny body and mind that make a Drosophila a Drosophila. You can check out the code and perhaps contribute over at or . |
Andreessen Horowitz debuts $600 million fund for games investments | Lucas Matney | 2,022 | 5 | 18 | Andreessen Horowitz is launching a new vertical fund exclusively focused on opportunities in the games industry. The new $600 million fund brings a pool of dedicated capital and a new internal structure dedicated to sourcing deals inside the games vertical. The new vehicle, called Games Fund One, joins other industry-specific arms at a16z, including its crypto and bio divisions. The fund is led by general partners Andrew Chen, Jon Lai and James Gwertzman. “With [Games Fund One], we will continue to add more functions and develop deeper networks that are tailored to the games ecosystem so we can help our portfolio companies with everything from building digital communities, to managing their virtual economies, to IP licensing best practices, to helping build their development teams,” a announcing the fund’s formation reads. The fund’s backers include a number of executives in the games world, including co-founders at such companies as King, Discord, Roblox, Zynga, Twitch, Blizzard and Riot Games. Andreessen Horowitz has already placed a number of bets in the world of gaming and MMOs, including Zynga and Oculus. The formation of the games vertical comes as another one of its bets, Facebook (now Meta), postures loudly about the opportunities in gaming when it comes to the metaverse. The new fund arrives at a moment of retraction for the broader tech industry as investors encourage startups to hunker down and preserve cash while public tech stocks continue to get hammered. Gaming infrastructure company Unity is trading more than 80% below its November 2021 highs while games platform Roblox is trading some 75% below the highs reached during the same period. |
NY AG is investigating Twitch, Discord and 4chan for their role in the Buffalo mass shooting | Taylor Hatmaker | 2,022 | 5 | 18 | New York Attorney General Letitia James will launch an investigation into the role that social media and online message boards played in the tragedy that unfolded in Buffalo over the weekend. On Saturday, an 18-year-old shooter opened fire at a Tops supermarket, killing 10 people and wounding three others. In online materials, the suspected shooter describes how discovering white supremacy on 4chan radicalized his thinking and ultimately inspired him to carry out the deadly attack. The investigation was prompted by a referral from New York Governor Kathy Hochul, who called on social media companies to monitor content more aggressively for dangerous extremism in the days following the mass shooting. “I am seeking your assistance to investigate the specific online platforms that were used to broadcast and amplify the acts and intentions of the mass shooting that took place in Buffalo on May 14, 2022 and determine whether specific companies have civil or criminal liability for their role in promoting, facilitating, or providing a platform to plan and promote violence,” Hochul wrote in a . The attorney general’s office plans to examine social apps and sites “including but not limited to” Twitch, Discord, 4chan and 8chan. “Time and time again, we have seen the real-world devastation that is borne of these dangerous and hateful platforms, and we are doing everything in our power to shine a spotlight on this alarming behavior and take action to ensure it never happens again,” James said. Her office did not provide much detail on the investigation, which lumps mainstream social media services with content moderation together with notorious, anything goes hubs of extremism like 4chan and 8chan. While the former will likely comply with the AG’s office, the latter two web forums are less likely to humor the investigation. 8chan, which is run out of the Philippines, in particular is a hotbed of activity for extremists planning racist violence. Mass shooters in El Paso, Christchurch, New Zealand, Poway, California and now Buffalo all prior to their deadly attacks. In a journal entry prior to the attack, the Buffalo shooter noted that he would publish his writing on 8chan and 4chan in addition to sending it to his Discord servers and friends list. The web forum that appears to be the main source of the suspected shooter’s ideals, 4chan, refuses to make any proactive efforts to moderate content and has long incubated white supremacy and other dangerous forms of extremism. Amazon-owned Twitch detected the shooter’s livestream within two minutes of the violence beginning and removed the video, though it continues to circulate openly on platforms like Twitter and Facebook. It’s not clear if the AG’s investigation will also examine the spread of the graphic video, which has been copied many times and shared around the web. The suspected shooter published his plans in detail to a and on Google Docs, but neither private digital space is scanned to detect extremist threats. The question of how much online platforms should monitor non-public spaces is a difficult one given privacy concerns and existing laws, but it’s also a conversation we’re likely to be hearing a lot about in the coming days. |
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Grubhub’s free lunch promo creates a literal ‘Hell’s Kitchen’ for NYC restaurants | Amanda Silberling | 2,022 | 5 | 18 | Grubhub offered to everyone in New York City yesterday. What could go wrong? Between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m., New Yorkers could use a Grubhub promo code to get a $15 discount on lunch. Naturally, restaurants got flooded with an unexpected deluge of orders. According to , a worker at a Mexican restaurant in Harlem hand-delivered orders herself via Uber, since their in-house delivery driver was too overloaded. An employee at Greenberg’s Bagels in Brooklyn also told Buzzfeed that they received 50 orders in an hour, whereas they typically receive about 10 orders from Grubhub per day. Across New York City, Grubhub said that it received about per minute. Within an hour, some users tweeted that the promo code was no longer working, or that restaurants had marked themselves closed to avoid receiving any more orders. All in all, many orders got delayed and/or cancelled, but restaurant workers and delivery drivers were most adversely impacted, struggling to fulfill orders at an impossible rate. Grubhub said that it modeled this promotion after a previous one, but this time, customers used the promo code six times more, causing unexpectedly high demand. “To help businesses prepare for yesterday’s promotion, we gave advance notice to all restaurants in our network, which included multiple forms of communications across email and in-platform,” Grubhub said in a statement to TechCrunch. “Even with that preparation, no one could anticipate the level of demand and unfortunately that caused strain on some restaurants. We’ll undoubtedly have a lot of learnings from this that can help us optimize and mitigate issues in the future.” Evidently, many restaurant workers didn’t get the memo — and even so, taking proactive measures like adding an extra driver to a shift wouldn’t have prepared a restaurant to meet such a dramatic surge in demand. New Yorkers went as hard for free lunch as the Rangers did in game 7. Our restaurants and drivers are still working hard fulfilling your orders. Make sure to show them love today (and every day). 🍕🧡 — Grubhub (@Grubhub) This is not the first time that a Grubhub promotion inadvertently served restaurants the short end of the stick. In March, D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine for “misleading District residents and taking advantage of local restaurants to boost its own profits.” One incident the lawsuit referenced was Grubhub’s early-pandemic-era “ ” promotion, which was discontinued. Launched in late March 2020, Grubhub offered restaurants the opportunity to offer a $10 coupon on orders over $30, but the restaurant had to foot the bill for that free food. On the consumer end, Grubhub encouraged customers to “save while supporting the restaurants [they] love,” even though their promotion actually put more strain on restaurants by pressuring them to lower profit margins. For yesterday’s promotion, Grubhub paid for customers’ $15 coupon, not the restaurants. The company says it fulfilled , which at $15 a pop, would put the company out $6,000,000 for what was largely a screw up. Grubhub has also faced scrutiny and legal troubles for false advertising, without the business’ consent. That means that a consumer might place a Grubhub order for a restaurant that doesn’t know they’re even on Grubhub, meaning that the business could pay a fee to Grubhub without knowing it. Or, once a Grubhub courier arrives, the restaurant might not even know that they were expected to prepare that takeout order. Despite an uptick in delivery orders during the pandemic, food delivery apps have still to turn a profit. But customer acquisition promotions like yesterday’s likely won’t encourage customers to keep coming back to Grubhub. |
Buffalo shooter invited others to his private Discord ‘diary’ 30 minutes before attack | Taylor Hatmaker | 2,022 | 5 | 18 | Discord has provided more insight into how the shooter who opened fire in a Buffalo, New York supermarket over the weekend used its service prior to the . The shooter, 18-year-old Payton Gendron, is charged with first degree murder in the mass shooting, which left and three injured. In the month leading up to the attack on the Buffalo Tops grocery store, which he researched and selected in an effort to harm as many Black people as possible, he used Discord to document his plans in extreme detail. According to Discord, the suspected shooter created a private, invite-only server that he used as a “personal diary chat log.” The server had no other members until 30 minutes before the attack began, when a “small group of people” received an invite and joined. “Before that, our records indicate no other people saw the diary chat log in this private server,” a Discord spokesperson told TechCrunch. The company declined to provide further details about the server, the members who joined or their activity, citing the ongoing investigation. In a statement to TechCrunch Discord described a “mix of proactive and reactive tools” it uses moderate content, including machine learning, community moderators and reporting tools for users. The company’s safety team also monitors the social network’s servers and takes action based on observed “platform trends or intelligence” on the platform. “We have a dedicated Counter-Extremism sub-team that works to identify and remove any spaces where users are organizing around violent and hateful ideologies that target racial, ethnic, and religious minorities before they are reported to us,” a Discord spokesperson said. “The team also works to track and deplatform violent and hateful networks that use Discord to disseminate extremist content.” Discord, a text and voice chat app, is best known for its large, public messaging rooms but it also allows users to create private, invite-only servers. In updates to the Discord server, which shares a username with the Twitch channel he used to livestream the shooting, the suspect documented his violent, racist views in depth. He also detailed the logistics of how he would carry out the mass shooting, including the gear he would use, his shopping trips leading up to the shooting and his day-of plans. While it’s unknown what other Discord servers Gendron was active in, he references his activity on the app in the chat logs. “I didn’t even think until now that the people in my discord groups are probably going to get no knock raided by ATF and FBI agents,” he wrote. While Discord served as a kind of digital journal for the atrocities he would later carry out, he also compiled a nearly 200-page screed about his beliefs, weapons and plan to commit violence in Google Docs. In early May, he expressed concerns that Google might discover his plan for violence in messages sent on the private Discord server. “Ok I’m a bit stressed that a google worker is going to see my manifesto fuck,” he wrote. “WHY did I write it on google docs I should have had some other solution.” Unfortunately, those concerns were unfounded. After the shooting, Google did remove the document for violating its terms of service. The suspect, who livestreamed the shooting over Twitch, also spent time on 4chan’s /pol/, an infamous submessage board rife with racism, misogyny and extremism. Unlike mainstream social networks like Discord, 4chan does not do any proactive content moderation and only removes illegal content when required to do so. In Discord chat logs reviewed by TechCrunch the shooter notes that he “only really turned racist” after encountering white supremacist ideas on 4chan. Five years ago, Discord was implicated in the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally, an open gathering of white supremacists and other far-right extremists that ended with one counter-protester dead. The rally’s participants and organizers came together in private Discord servers to plan the day’s events and discuss the logistics of what would take place in Charlottesville. The company responded by , though maintained that it did not read messages on private servers. In a company page about its published last year, Discord noted that 15 percent of its workforce — roughly 60 people — worked on its trust and safety team, up from one during the Charlottesville rally. The company explains that its safety team “splits its time between responding to user reports and now proactively finding and removing servers and users engaging in high-harm activity like violent extremist organizing.” “We’ve been paying close attention to violent extremist groups and movements ever since we learned how the organizers of the 2017 Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, Virginia utilized Discord to plan their hateful activities,” the company said. Like Reddit, most of Discord’s hands-on moderation comes from community moderators within its chat rooms. And like most social media companies, Discord relies on a blend of automated content scanning and human moderators. Last year, the , an AI software company that detects and removes online hate and harassment, to bolster those efforts. In the years following the deadly violence in Charlottesville, Discord successfully sought to distance itself from its association with the far-right extremists and white supremacists who once called the social network home. More recently, Discord has also put some distance between its current brand and its origins as a popular chat app for gamers, reframing itself as an inviting hub for a huge spectrum of thriving online communities. “Our deepest sympathies are with the victims and their families,” a Discord spokesperson said of the tragedy in Buffalo, adding that it is assisting law enforcement in the ongoing investigation. “Hate has no place on Discord and we are committed to combating violence and extremism.” |
Daily Crunch: Plaid product updates signal push to ‘own’ more of the account funding process | Christine Hall | 2,022 | 5 | 18 | It’s Wednesday, May 18, 2022, and we are hanging out at our event, ogling cars that fly, drive themselves and have various identity crises. Wish you were here if you’re not, and hope to run into you if you are! — and The green, green grass of climate investing just , a sustainability-focused public and private equity firm co-founded by Al Gore. Over on TC+, wonders, in a world where everything is a little overpriced, . Ugh, we really do get to work with some of the smartest, most thoughtful humans. This week, on Equity, asks in a post-Roe world. More? You want more? Alrighty, then: / Getty Images The technological advances we’ve made over the last 2,000 years are stunning, but the construction industry still relies on centuries-old technology. Configuring a robot to mix cement is relatively easy, but delivering a CementTron 3000 to a job site, training workers and keeping it maintained are not the kinds of disruptions builders are looking for — especially when margins are thin and workers are hard to find. Even so, investors are backing startups bringing robotics, data management, automation and augmented reality into the construction process. To learn more about the market forces shaping this sector in 2022, we spoke to five investors: It’s apparently “new features day” (though we guess that could be every day with the way Big Tech is slinging them around). Here’s what we saw: Speaking of Apple, the tech giant is running a new . In it, the company highlights ways it is enabling its users to take back their private information. Meanwhile, over in Spain, the country for not being in compliance with the EU’s data protection program. , which is a way for neighborhood stores to join the digital storefront wave by creating their own e-commerce sites. It’s certainly something moving through Latin America, so we’ll see how this plays out in India, where 30 million stores are up for grabs. |
Zoox reveals close-up of its autonomous robotaxi | Jaclyn Trop | 2,022 | 5 | 18 | Zoox shared a close-up of its commercial electric robotaxi at the TechCrunch Mobility 2022 conference in San Mateo, California, on Wednesday. The four-passenger, fully autonomous vehicle features a with large black sliding doors, floor-to-ceiling windows, beam-forming speakers to direct audio alerts to distracted pedestrians and a 60-watt USB-C port with enough power to charge a 15-inch MacBook. The sleek, square silhouette lacks a front and rear end. Instead, the bidirectional robotaxi is symmetrical, with the same sloped face featuring cameras, lights, speakers and a large window on either side. “Internally, we call it a north side and a south side,” Zoox co-founder and CTO Jesse Levinson said during an interview onstage. Darrell Etherington The design features a sensor pod atop each corner of the robotaxi, which allows the vehicle to see in all directions. The corner architecture helps “see basically everything, including things behind things.” “The shape of the vehicle is perfect for autonomous driving because each of those sensor pods has a 270-degree field of view,” Levinson said. “Because there’s one on each corner, not only can we see everything 360 degrees but we have an overlapping, redundant field of view that helps us see around things.” The company in December 2020 on a closed course in San Francisco and has been working toward making it . Levinson declined to give a time frame, but said the company is “really close.” The sliding doors create a wide aperture that opens to a low floor, making it easy for passengers to enter and exit. Each side displays a strip of speakers above the headlights. The beam-forming speakers can shoot sound in any direction with a targeted focus, alerting specific distracted pedestrians with a ping that’s more polite than a honk, Levinson said. [gallery ids="2321244,2321238,2321240,2321241,2321242,2321243,2321245,2321246,2321247,2321248"] “They’ll hear it and everybody else won’t.” Each of the four seats features a seven-inch screen, comparable in size to an iPhone. The simple interface allows passengers to operate the vehicle’s four-zone climate control, check the route and change music. The simplicity is designed to reduce visual stimuli. “It’s not about super-fancy 3D gaming,” Levinson said. “We’re not bombarding you with like screens and advertisements everywhere.” The passenger experience “actually is quite boring after 30 seconds,” he added, “but that’s a good thing because people just want to get on with their lives, have a conversation, read a book, play with their iPhone or whatever they want to do.” Each seat also comes with a wireless charging pad and a 60-watt USB-C port. The ceiling features a pinpoint light display Zoox calls a “celestial headliner,” modeled after Rolls-Royce’s five-figure starry headliner option. “It’s a little bit of our prestige feature,” Levinson said. “If we ever have to build a lower-cost version, that’s probably the first thing to go.” |
Aurora expands autonomous freight pilot with FedEx in Texas | Rebecca Bellan | 2,022 | 5 | 18 | Aurora Innovation, an autonomous vehicle technology company, has expanded its self-driving freight pilot with FedEx to include a new lane from Fort Worth to El Paso, Texas. The startup has been since September 2021, which has involved making the 240-mile trip every night. The new lane challenges Aurora’s trucks to a much longer journey of about 600 miles, on which they will operate on a weekly basis, according to the company. Aurora has been hauling freight between its new terminals in Fort Worth and El Paso since March, the company said. Shipments carried out on its first commercial lane between Dallas and Houston have all been delivered on time 100% of the time, according to Aurora, which noted that it has provided thousands of FedEx customers with autonomously transported packages. Aurora’s trucks, which are based on the new Peterbilt 579, are capable of operating during various weather conditions and all hours of the day and night. To date, Aurora and FedEx have completed a total of 60,000 miles with zero safety incidents, according to Aurora. “Some time ago, I was asked why the general public should care about autonomous trucking. This is why. In six months of working with FedEx, we’ve safely, reliably, and efficiently transported packages for tens of thousands of FedEx customers,” said Sterling Anderson, Aurora co-founder and chief product officer, in a statement. “This lane expansion came ahead of schedule and we’re delighted to continue building the future of trucking with one of the country’s biggest and most important transportation companies.” |
Joby Aviation acquires Avionyx to accelerate aerospace software certification | Rebecca Bellan | 2,022 | 5 | 18 | , a California-based company developing electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicles (eVTOL) , announced the acquisition of , an aerospace software engineering firm, on the TechCrunch Sessions: Mobility stage on Wednesday. Joby’s piloted five-seat eVTOL aircraft can carry four passengers at speeds of up to 200 miles per hour, with a maximum range of 150 miles on a single charge, the company said. Taking on Avionyx, a company with over 30 years in the aerospace environment that has been working with Joby since last year, allows Joby to do what many companies are trying to do: become vertically integrated. “We believe [being vertically integrated is] the fastest way to get to market because we don’t have to worry as much about some of the supply chain issues. We can think about, what are the regulations for certifying the pilots, how do you actually build the simulators?” said Bonny Simi, head of air operations and people at Joby, onstage on Wednesday. “You know, when you certify a plane, you then also have to certify a simulator at the same time.” At the moment, Joby is focusing on vertical integration around aircraft development and certification. The company’s first Systems Review and Compliance Review by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) was Gary Gysin, CEO of Wisk Aero, another eVTOL company that’s focusing on autonomous air operations, disagreed with Simi onstage at TC Sessions: Mobility about the benefits of vertical integration, saying that not owning all of the components will actually give Wisk a faster path to market, so it looks like the game is afoot. However, because Wisk isn’t aiming for piloted rides, Gysin did concede that Joby’s aircraft will likely hit the skies before Wisk’s. Joby is targeting aerial ridesharing service in 2024. Avionyx’s experience in the sector will be able to help Joby advance operations at its Vehicle Software Integration Lab in Marina, California, where Joby uses flight and hardware simulators to rapidly conduct thousands of pre-programmed tests to validate and verify the performance of its different aircraft software systems. The company said a similar facility will be set up in San Jose, Costa Rica, where Avionyx hails from, to accelerate those software verification efforts. In addition to supporting Joby’s FAA certification program, Avionyx, an AS-9100D-certified supplier, will continue its work in support of the broader aviation community.
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What’s more stable than Bitcoin or UST? AriZona Iced Tea | Amanda Silberling | 2,022 | 5 | 18 | ICYMI, stablecoins are in deep shit right now, and the chaos that unfolded this week has thrown the entire crypto ecosystem into turmoil with over $400 billion in losses from just one coin alone. In these times of uncertainty, all we can rely on is that we can purchase a can of AriZona Iced Tea for 99 cents, the that the refreshing beverage sold for in 1996. , a collective of three techy artists, thinks that an (unofficially) can save the crypto economy. A stablecoin, as the name implies, is supposed to be stable because it tracks the value of another asset — similar to how gold bars once backed the U.S. dollar during gold-standard times. In the case of TerraUSD (UST), formerly one of the largest stablecoins that fell from grace this week, each UST coin was supposed to stay consistently equivalent in value to one U.S. dollar. But there were no physical reserves — instead, the group behind UST used algorithms and reserves of other cryptocurrencies to manage its price. That system , leading some holders of UST to withdraw their money, and before investors knew what had hit them, the panic and fear compounded and UST was trading as low as . UST’s sudden collapse has led to over $400 billion in losses for investors over the past week or so, the, well, of stablecoins as a whole. Mossy’s solution for the calamitous sector, , is backed by what they claim is America’s most stable asset: cans of AriZona Iced Tea. For over 30 years, AriZona founder Don Vultaggio to keep the cost of each can at exactly 99 cents, playing hardball with suppliers to keep input costs low and sacrificing his own profit for the sake of consistency. As for Mossy, you may have seen their work before. The group launched the “ ” project that got them in as well as the “ ” NFTs that only Twitter users who have been blocked by famed (and pugnacious) venture capitalist Marc Andreessen can mint. Mossy quietly announced the on Twitter one and a half hours before selling out all 1,000 tokens they initially supplied. We sat down with , one of the three members of the artists’ collective — another member is Mike Lacher, who recently went viral for his AI that your music taste, while the third member chooses to remain anonymous. Moore regaled us with his (mostly) straight-faced, highly serious explanation of Mossy’s ambitions to bring stability to an unstable world — one can of iced tea at a time. BM: We’re a little group called Mossy, and the last three things we’ve made have all been web3 projects. We created , and then we did , which was an NFT series that you can only mint if you’re blocked by specific people on Twitter, like Marc Andreesen. And now the latest is USDTea, which is a stablecoin that’s linked to the most stable asset we know on planet Earth, which is AriZona Iced Tea. Well, first of all, I just got word that we are fully out of the 1,000 that we started with [after about an hour and a half post-launch]. That’s the weirdness of this world. It was the same thing with non-fungible Olive Gardens; we quietly released it, and then it was gone within I think 10 hours. The way the flow works is the fees aren’t super high. It’s an ERC 20 token. I bought some and I think it was, you know, negligible, like $4 or something in gas fees. And then, just like any other stablecoins that are pegged to currency, you can always switch back. In this case, you can burn your USDTea and we will ship you cans of AriZona Iced Tea, because it wouldn’t be backed by it if we didn’t actually do that. So we have our strategic reserves of AriZona Iced Tea to use if people want to convert it back at any given time. It’s 1,000 cans where we’re starting. That might expand in the future. And if we do that, I think we’d probably be open to external auditing depending on the situation, but currently, we’ve got 1,000 cans basically, and we will distribute them as necessary. Right now we do have reserves split around different locations around the U.S. The more we do this, the more it becomes something that is more full time, but I’d say we’re mostly artists. We’re three people. So we’re pretty … I guess the word would be nimble. It allows us to make things very quickly. In the case of the destabilization of currency-pegged cryptocurrencies, you know, when did that whole snafu go down? We’re trying to bolster the crypto economy as quickly as possible, and we can only do that with a small team. Exactly. There’s something to be said about the stability of stablecoins, right? That’s half the word, stable. And then you think, what’s the most stable thing you can imagine? AriZona Iced Tea, you really can’t beat it. It’s not necessarily the goal, really, but I think we want to support ourselves at some point. We’re in the interest of making interesting work on the internet, and that is the ultimate goal. If it makes us money, great, and if it doesn’t, then that’s fine too. Ultimately, we’re just making interesting things — making people think, making people laugh, or, you know, stabilize their assets in canned iced teas. These are fungible assets, so it’s meant to be more of a currency replacement than, say, an individual art piece. One USDTea is equal to one USDTea. There’s no one of them that’s better than the other or rarer than the other. They’re all equal to one can of AriZona’s Iced Tea. AriZona stablecoin when?? — AriZona Iced Tea (@DrinkAriZona) That’s just literally the logistics of shipping. That’s not a money-making scheme to make profit off of the transaction; it’s to get you your personalized tea assets that you can store in your own location. It just means that as Ethereum might change in price, we want to match that so the rate ends up being around 99 cents. No, there’s no algorithm yet. That might come in the future — it all depends on how wide we expand this. We’re taking it one step at a time. This has been about 90 minutes worth of launch time, so once we stabilize our own situation, we’ll figure out what we need to do. I think our company speaks through the work itself. We’re here to try to stabilize an unstable world, so I think that backing our assets in a new, innovative and most importantly stable asset … I think that sort of says all that we need to say about that situation. Are we bullish? Are we bearish? I don’t know. I think we’re exploring it. We love it as a medium through which to make interesting art pieces. I don’t think we necessarily have an answer or have an animal to assign to it. You can just say anteater or something like that. |
Dear Sophie: Can I do anything to speed up the EAD renewal process? | Sophie Alcorn | 2,022 | 5 | 18 | of “Dear Sophie,” the advice column that answers immigration-related questions about working at technology companies. “Your questions are vital to the spread of knowledge that allows people all over the world to rise above borders and pursue their dreams,” says , a Silicon Valley immigration attorney. “Whether you’re in people ops, a founder or seeking a job in Silicon Valley, I would love to in my next column.” TechCrunch+ members receive access to weekly “Dear Sophie” columns; . Dear Centered, I’ve got fantastic news for you and other L-1 spouses — and your employers! As long as your visa remains valid, you are no longer at risk of having your employment interrupted due to delays in getting your Employment Authorization Document (EAD). Thanks to a policy change by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), getting work authorization is now easier for L-2 spouses of L-1 visa holders as well as a few other categories. As this week, for anybody who wants to work hard in the U.S., immigration should be a “no-brainer.” During the past two years, processing times for EADs soared due to a combination of backlogs prompted by the pandemic, funding issues and paper-based USCIS processing procedures. Depending on which USCIS service center processed the EAD renewal application ( ), timing ranged from about 90 days to more than a year. Interesting to note, it can take anywhere from 7.5 to 14.5 months to at the California Service Center. At the Texas Service Center, it can take two to 13 months. Joanna Buniak / Last September, a group of spouse-dependent visa holders filed a against the Secretary of Homeland Security, who oversees USCIS. The suit was filed on behalf of dependent spouses of and visa holders, many of whom had been forced to stop working when USCIS failed to approve and send out new EADs before the current ones expired due to substantial processing delays. The situation was compounded by the fact that EAD renewals can’t be filed more than six months in advance of their expiration date. |
Fintech Slice joins UPI race to challenge PhonePe and Google Pay | Manish Singh | 2,022 | 5 | 18 | Slice is adding the popular railroad UPI on its eponymous app as the Indian fintech looks to broaden its offerings and pushes to become a one-stop payments app for consumers in the world’s second largest internet market. The Bengaluru-headquartered startup, which , said it is rolling out UPI feature to all its existing users as well over 10 million of those who have been on its waitlist. Slice offers customers credit card-like features, and through its app gives them access to a range of deals with popular merchants. The UPI feature is the latest addition for the Slice app, which is aiming to drive engagement as it gives users more reasons to interact with the startup’s offerings. Rajan Bajaj, founder and chief executive of Slice, said in an interview that by leveraging UPI the payments app is opening the app to every smartphone user in the country. UPI users on Slice will be able to create unique IDs that will allow them to search for their friends by their names instead of their phone numbers, as is popular on other UPI-supported apps. These unique IDs are powered by Andy, a web3 project that Slice has been working on since last year. “While building our UPI product, we ensured that we removed all the friction — there is no advertisement, there is no cross-selling, and there are no 100+ CTAs. The question we keep asking ourselves is ‘how can the user do this in one second or even less time?’ And we wanted to make this happen, now,” he said. TechCrunch reported in late March that Slice was and was revamping the app. With UPI support, Slice is entering a crowded market. Google’s Gpay and Flipkart-backed PhonePe currently lead the UPI chart with over 80% of the market share. Scores of other players including Paytm and Tata Neu also offer support for UPI payments. UPI, a five-year-old payments protocol built by a coalition of retail banks, is the most popular way Indians transact money online. In the month of April, the UPI network processed over 5.5 billion transactions, up from 7.2 million during the same period four years ago. The payments network, which is supported by over 300 banks, allows users on one app to send money to any other user on any other UPI app. “The payments network in India is very open with interoperability,” said Bajaj. “I believe that a product with the best consumer experience will eventually win people’s hearts. The significant growth which we have seen in the last few years on our slice super card proves that we have really struck a chord culturally with our consumers and they would love to use us for all their payment needs.” Slice, which is backed by Insight Partners and Tiger Global, said it aims to turn its credit business profitable in the coming months. “As Slice turns profitable in the core product, the company will increasingly be using the free cash flows from there to increase the scope of what Slice stands for its consumers,” it said. |
Waymo is expanding its driverless program in Phoenix | Rebecca Bellan | 2,022 | 5 | 18 | The Waymo Driver autonomously navigating through a busy intersection to pick up a rider at the Phoenix Convention Center. Waymo Waymo’s initial Trusted Tester service area in Downtown Phoenix. Waymo In terms of further expansion, while Waymo wouldn’t share many details, Dolgov did hint at plans to launch a service in a third city. Aside from Phoenix and San Francisco, Waymo has tested in cities and states like Seattle, Michigan and New York City, said Dolgov. Dolgov noted that Waymo will follow its playbook, in which the company identifies a market that it is interested in based on its fifth-generation Waymo Driver capabilities, test there for a few months and then, as we’re seeing, be prepared to pull out the safety operator. “We’ve been investing and moving qualitatively forward on the technical side to that fifth-generation system that is designed to work everywhere,” said Dolgov. “N we |
YouTube teases livestream shopping expansion with co-streams, live redirects | Sarah Perez | 2,022 | 5 | 18 | In recent years, YouTube has been working to transform its platform into more of a shopping destination with product launches like or more recently, the ability to hosted by creators. Now, it’s furthering that investment with new features for live shopping experiences. At yesterday’s YouTube Brandcast event, where the company pitched itself to advertisers as a , YouTube teased upcoming features that it claimed would make it easier for viewers to discover and buy from brands. The company touted its forthcoming tools as offering advertisers a better way to engage viewers and make connections with their audience. One new feature, explained YouTube, will allow two creators to go live at the same time to co-host a single live shopping stream. This could effectively double the draw for the event, as each creator would bring their own fanbase to the stream. This feature arrives shortly after YouTube a pilot program called “Go Live Together,” a new mobile collaborative streaming feature that would enable creators to invite guests to their livestream with a link before going live together. This trial suggested YouTube had its eye on developing tools to better power joint livestreams — just as it’s now planning to introduce with its upcoming two-person live shopping streams. The addition could also make YouTube more competitive with Instagram, which launched the ability for last year. In addition to leveraging creators to build an audience for a live shopping event, YouTube’s shopping livestreams platform also offers other tools specifically designed to drive sales. The brand-integrated shopping experience actually allows viewers to by tapping on a built-in “view products” button that then brings up a list of items featured by the creators. The company says its new two-person live shopping feature will roll out sometime later this year. Another upcoming option announced at Brandcast is something YouTube calls “live redirects.” In this case, creators will be able to start a shopping livestream on their channel, then redirect their audience over to a brand’s channel for fans to keep watching. This allows brands to tap into the power of the creator’s platform and reach their fanbase, but then gives the brands themselves access to that audience — and the key metrics and analytics associated with their live event — directly on their own YouTube channel. This will also roll out sometime this year, says YouTube, but didn’t provide a timeframe. YouTube’s announcements follow the of the live e-commerce market in the U.S. — a trend inspired by the livestream shopping activity surging in China, where streamers can pull . Today, a number of startups have also entered this space, including , , , , , and others. virtual shopping capabilities to connect its buy-now, pay-later customers with live product demos from retail partners. Retailers, too, are getting in on the action. a live events platform, while and are among those that added live shopping to their apps. Meanwhile, big tech platforms are wooing brands by touting their wider reach. Over the past year or so, we’ve seen experience; Facebook’s live shopping boosting sales for brands like , Benefit, Samsung, and and Instagram hosting live shopping events to Twitter even began to , also with Walmart’s help on its pilot run — but it’s unclear where such initiatives will land if the Elon Musk buyout comes to pass. While YouTube is certainly one of the largest creator platforms for video, there is some indication that it needs to catch up to its big tech rivals in livestream shopping, however. found that only 14.4% of survey respondents said YouTube’s platform drove them to purchase during a livestream event compared with 15.8% for TikTok, 45.8% for Instagram and 57.8% for Facebook. eMarketer/Insider Intelligence YouTube’s new livestream features — and particularly the one that pushes a creator’s fanbase to a brand’s channel — could make its solution more compelling. “People come to YouTube every day to make decisions about what to buy, and 87% of viewers say that when they’re shopping or browsing on YouTube, they feel like they can make a faster decision about what to purchase because of all the information that we have in videos,” said YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, speaking to the audience at the Brandcast live event last night. “We have so much shopping activity that is already happening on YouTube, so we are making it even easier for viewers to discover and to buy,” she said. |
Meet Philip Reinckens, Spin’s new CEO | Rebecca Bellan | 2,022 | 5 | 18 | Ben Bear, the CEO of shared micromobility operator Spin, is stepping down from his role just a couple of months after the , another shared operator with a large European presence. In Bear’s place will be Philip Reinckens, a Tier veteran who, as of June 6, will be responsible for leading the new direction of Spin, including accelerating the integration with its new parent company. “It’s been a whirlwind since I took over last year,” Bear told TechCrunch. “Really from the first day that I took over, the top objective that I got from Ford was to find a partner, and I feel like we’ve landed the plane on that and it’s a perfect time to step aside and accelerate us becoming one company while keeping the DNA that has made Spin the top choice of cities.” When Tier acquired Spin from Ford in March, it marked the German company’s entrance into the North American market. Reinckens, who is relocating with his family from Munich to San Francisco, has held several roles at Tier in Germany, including most recently the VP of business transformation. Prior to that role, Reinckens served as general manager of a European region comprising six countries. Before joining the micromobility landscape, Reinckens worked as a strategy consultant in the automotive industry for companies like Volkswagen and Faurecia, a Tier One supplier. We sat down with the new CEO to talk about Tier’s plans for Spin’s future growth, and why he’s the person to lead that transition. After working for Volkswagen and Faurecia, I switched sides to external consulting, but still focused on the automotive and mobility industry. That was back in 2013. We were supporting OEMs and suppliers with all the hot topics of the day around electrification, autonomous mobility, connectivity and all that, I was really drawn into that. Normally with consultants, either you stay until you become a partner or you look for a good opportunity to go out into the field and do something on your own. For me that came in 2019 when the German market opened to micromobility. I knew that the scooter segment was really going through the roof in North America with a lot of heavy VC funding, so I was super curious about doing consulting for a startup. So what I take out of automotive, but especially my background as a consultant, is the willingness to work and deliver fast and focus on what’s important. I think being quick in execution and also doing long hours is something you learn in consulting, and when we launched Tier in the German market, I was working way more than I used to because suddenly we had eight cities to manage from day one. I really like the independence and the speed of a startup. Spin already excels at a lot today. They were the first to do sidewalk riding detection, everything they’ve done around winning university campuses, the hubs and charging systems…those are really excellent USPs. So it’s worth focusing on and strengthening those. I want to focus on the consumer experience, having the right features but also providing reliable mobility, which means having the right scooter at the right point in time at the right spot. Tier has a lot of learnings there that we can bring over. We want to go all in on swappable batteries. It changes the way operations need to be run because simply you cannot put scooters every morning in the same place where you know that the conversion is great, but you have to find ways to reallocate and rebalance the scooters in the most efficient manner. And so my strategy for the next 12 months is to really make sure that this integration is a success, that we are tapping into the synergies and efficiencies as a joint company and build on what Spin is already great at, while also finding some some levers into the European market. We are already in talks over some great initiatives and partnerships to potentially look into further expansion. Everybody at the moment is looking into these kinds of technologies. Parking and rider behavior is the number one criteria for winning cities. But if you look and compare the different competitors, like Luna, Fantasmo and Drover, they seem to be similar, but in terms of capabilities, they’re very different. One is advanced in this direction. The other one is advanced in that direction. Fantasmo’s biggest asset is around parking, and Drover is especially strong on sidewalk detection. At the moment we’re super happy to be working with both of them and everyone has the right tech for different use cases. In the U.S. it’s different than in Germany. Not as much compared to Germany because here there are lots of racks and physical locks which can be used. There’s also a lot more free floating and free parking in Germany and France and the U.K. where Fantasmo’s tech makes more sense. It’s clear that you need to focus one brand on one continent. But between the companies and the different USPs and strengths and capabilities, clearly the entire acquisition is there to leverage the strength and to make both companies better. Consumers in North America at the moment have a very strong relationship with Spin, and Tier is a completely unknown brand. At the moment, switching that would risk losing customers. At the moment, it’s unclear to say. As you can imagine with nextbike, Spin and Fantasmo, we have a tough integration to do. Quality goes first. Quantity second. Having worked for big car companies before, I really know how corporations look internally and how they’re sometimes comfortable in terms of spending. I believe this is the biggest difference between Spin and Tier. Tier has 100% startup DNA where we we really look out for our cash burn. I think that’s also what brought us into the position to be able to compete with Bird and Lime and others, that we were the most capital-efficient companies. I mean, otherwise we would not have been backed by SoftBank and Goldman. It’s in our DNA to be cost-conscious, and to tie ecological sustainability to financial sustainability. We can only provide an alternative mobility solution if the unit economics behind it are sustainable, and that means not losing money on a per-ride basis. This is one of the big strengths we have and where we can certainly help Spin get better going forward. Well, we talked about swappable batteries, and we were the first player to go all in on that technology, which allowed us to lower variable costs significantly. When I look back at the days of the first Corona wave in Europe, we saw that due to our cost advantages, which we got through swappable batteries and in-housing all our operations, we were able to keep our scooter fleet on the streets even during lockdown when all the other competitors in Germany had to pull theirs. We were able to provide basic mobility even though movements on the streets were significantly lowered, but we caught that little bit of demand. And people were scared then of using public transport so a lot of customers then saw that micromobility is a good alternative. Let me start with Bolt. They have . But you really have to also acknowledge that their business is just different. They’re using micromobility as an acquisition tool for their ride-hailing and food delivery/quick e-commerce business. So it’s not entirely comparable. When I look at Bird, for instance, I am surprised to see that they have not invested into swappable batteries. I understand the reasons from their perspective. But as the whole industry has moved toward swappable batteries, I’m just surprised that they’re the only ones, out of the big ones, to still stick with that. Also, with their platform model, they haven’t focused on the city. And I think right now we’re in a phase where we see that focusing on the city is crucial. Right now? Look at Bird’s stock. I think the elephant in the room is that Bird didn’t choose the right timing. That’s just bad luck. Maybe also the vehicle itself as a SPAC — I’m not a big fan of SPACs, to be quite honest. But I mean, it’s just sad that as a representative of an entire segment, that they are getting bashed so heavily. I think the market is overreacting on Bird, and it doesn’t do the industry any good. |
Eva Longoria and Chris Wallace CNN+ shows will move to HBO Max and CNN | Lauren Forristal | 2,022 | 5 | 18 | Programming that was originally meant to live on the will now move over to CNN and HBO Max, Warner Bros. Discovery announced today at its first Upfront presentation for advertisers. Shows moving to the linear CNN network include “Eva Longoria: Searching for Mexico” and “Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy.” Another title that had been meant for CNN+, “Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace” —starring former longtime Fox News anchor Chris Wallace — will move to both HBO Max and CNN in the fall. It is unknown at this time where the rest of the CNN+ slate will end up, however, or if select CNN+ titles will later arrive on HBO Max further down the road. Before the launch of CNN+, HBO Max was the streaming home of many CNN titles, including “Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown.” HBO Max is a good place for these shows, as Warner Bros. Discovery shared with advertisers that HBO Max and discovery+ are enhancing the consumer experience with a light ad load, with less than four minutes of commercials per hour on average. Additionally, 80% of viewers watch HBO Max and discovery+ on their TV screens, and half are cord-cutters. According to the company, this extends the reach of advertisers into non-cable homes. We aren’t sure what the will look like once HBO Max and discovery+ fully merge. However, the variety of content — including CNN titles — offered will certainly attract a diverse audience. Also, at the company’s Upfront presentation, Chris Licht, chairman and CEO, CNN Worldwide, announced the launch of a topical, long-form news show as well as like “The Story of HQ Trivia,” “See It Loud: The History of Black Television,” “The 2010s,” “Gabby Giffords Won’t Back Down” and “Little Richard: I Am Everything.” The 2023 programming slate is an attempt made by CNN for a comeback as the recently launched streaming service. The short-lived streaming service, CNN+ reportedly saw and was . It seems that CEO David Zaslav was not about to let this tarnish the newly merged Warner Bros. Discovery. On , Zaslav said, “We looked at it, and we looked at the data, the number of users … They had spent an enormous amount of money trying to sell an independent product. The subscribers weren’t there. The users weren’t there … when we looked at the data, the business wasn’t there.” Lasting nearly 30 days, the cable news network’s streaming service spent to launch the product and another $100 million to promote it. reported CNN had planned to spend more than $1 billion on CNN+ over four years, according to sources familiar with the matter. Thus, Zaslav was (rightfully so) unwilling to invest any further into the platform. But CNN itself isn’t going anywhere, and the Warner Bros. Discovery CEO is bullish on the brand. At the Upfront presentation, the company expressed its determination to reinforce CNN’s role as a top news organization. Licht boasted that CNN is “the number one digital property in the world.” He added: The next chapter of CNN is one where we aspire to be a beacon for the kind of journalism essential to a functioning democracy. The time when extremes are dominating cable news. We will seek to go a different way, reflecting the real lives of our viewers and elevating the way America and the world view this medium. We intend to challenge the traditional philosophy of cable news, delivering programming and commentary that questions the status quo, shatters groupthink, holds our leaders on both sides of the aisle accountable to facts and fights fearlessly to get to the truth. |
Lidar exposes the remnants of an overgrown ancient civilization in the Amazon | Devin Coldewey | 2,022 | 5 | 27 | It’s Friday and the world is falling apart, so let’s just take a short mental health break with some interesting news out of the field of archaeology, where tech is enabling some fascinating new discoveries. of land in the Amazon basin has provided evidence of a previously unknown urban center of “mind blowing” complexity. To be clear, that doesn’t mean ancient aliens or long-lost technology, just that it far exceeds the expected levels of organization and population that scholars considered possible for Amazonians of 1,500 years ago. “Nobody expected that kind of society in that region … pyramids 20 meters high,” said Heiko Prümers, of the German Archaeological Institute, . “The whole region has been so densely habitated during the pre-hispanic time, that’s incredible to believe. There is a new civilization, new culture, waiting for us to study them.” Until recently it was thought that the Amazon had nothing but smaller tribes until the arrival of Spanish and Portuguese explorers — a typically Eurocentric view increasingly challenged by new scholarship. In this case Prümers was intrigued by mounds called , hidden beneath the vegetation but hinting at something greater. Excavations showed that these were not rubbish dumps (as some thought) but organized areas for graves, rites and other things indicative of a complex, hierarchical society. But finding bumps on the ground under the canopy of a rainforest is far from easy, so in 2019 they set out to scan the area by helicopter, using lidar to reconstruct the contours of the surface below the trees. This technique has proved highly fruitful recently, with and even a uncovered that way. Prümers et al. Lidar beams pass between the leaves and branches, bouncing back to provide a surprisingly detailed look at the height of the ground beneath. And more than ever this data can be quickly collected and analyzed to produce a 3D point cloud easily inspected for hidden structures. What the team found was more than a few new : platforms, huge pyramids, defensive structures, reservoirs and canals and more connecting what appeared to be hundreds of settlements of various sizes. This flies in the face of assumptions that local peoples were nomadic or foraging cultures, not sedentary and agricultural ones. Lidar imagery of features discovered in the Casarabe city using lidar. Prümers et al. The Casarabe culture, as it has been named following its discovery, remain mostly a mystery. After all, its existence was only recently confirmed — but this provides a starting point for further investigation. “We need to be patient and wait for further excavations in those sites to be able to explain something of what we are seeing right now,” said Prümers — though it’s work of a scale and duration that may require him to bequeath it to his students. “For me, who has worked over these last 20, 25 years in that region, it’s sort of a dream coming true! To say at the end of my career that, yeah, we have a new culture? That’s nice, I admit that.” As in so many domains, tech is an enabler (Prümers estimated it might have taken 400 years of digs to unearth all the things they found using lidar) but can never replace the hard work and expertise that humans bring to the equation. . |
Elon Musk says Starlink has been approved in Nigeria and Mozambique | Tage Kene-Okafor | 2,022 | 5 | 27 | Elon Musk announced in a on Friday that Starlink, the satellite internet service launched by SpaceX, his space exploration company, has been approved in Nigeria and Mozambique. This news is coming three days after Musk answered a about the service launch in Africa. “Yes, first countries in Africa to be announced coming soon,” he tweeted. “Starlink will serve everywhere on Earth that we’re legally allowed to serve.” Starlink operates in more than 30 countries where it is legally approved, in essence, where it has required licences to provide internet services. Its launch in Africa, particularly in Nigeria, has been in the works since 2021. Last May, SpaceX sent some representatives to the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), the country’s telecommunications regulator, to discuss the possibility of obtaining a license to operate Starlink in Nigeria. According to reports from local press, , the NCC has approved this license, corroborating Musk’s tweet today. The publication also said the license Starlink Internet Services Nigeria Ltd. (its trading name) obtained is under the Internet Service Provider (ISP) category — other service providers such as telcos and private operators fall within this category, too — and will last for a decade starting from May 2022. Starlink brings much-needed competition to Nigerian telecom operators such as MTN and , who have had to compete against each other without improving their internet quality. There’s one argument against Starlink, though: it’s expensive. At $110 (~₦60,500) for preorder — also its monthly price — and $599 (~₦330,000) for a full kit, including a terminal, mounting tripod, and Wi-Fi router, Starlink’s price is pricey for the average Nigerian — and Mozambique user. Its premium service costs about $2,500 (~₦1.375 million) for the full kit and $500 (~₦275,000) monthly. |
As crypto becomes more mainstream, can it stay decentralized? | Jacquelyn Melinek | 2,022 | 5 | 27 | continue to face downward trends, crypto markets are anticipating greater adoption as people see the digital asset sector as a hedge against inflation (even though some prices are currently down from their 52-week marks). Whether it’s first-time buyers of cryptocurrency or people learning more about NFTs, Bitcoin and the general crypto ecosystem, there has been an uptick globally in crypto awareness and, in turn, adoption, data indicates. About half of all crypto owners in the U.S., Latin America, Asia Pacific, Brazil, Hong Kong and India bought digital assets for the first time in 2021, marking a major breakthrough for the nascent industry, according to a Gemini . Globally, 41% of individuals surveyed who did not own crypto said they were interested in learning more or buying it in 2022, the report added. At the end of 2021, the global crypto market had 295 million users, but that number might reach 1 billion by the end of 2022, based on last year’s rate of growth, according to a by Crypto.com. But given the , with the total crypto market cap on the year to date, it’s uncertain whether that 1 billion mark will be hit within the next six months. As crypto becomes more mainstream, more closely to (they say) protect consumers. Just last week, The Group of Seven, an international political forum of members from the U.S., Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United Kingdom, swift, consistent and comprehensive regulation of crypto-asset issuers and service providers. But can crypto stay decentralized as governments globally home in on the industry? Decentralization can mean different things to different people, but most in the web3 community agree that it is one of the key factors to what makes crypto, well, . So as regulators enter the space and begin drawing out frameworks and guidelines, decentralization must remain prominent across the industry if it wants to hold true to the core precepts that it was founded on. “Decentralization is at the core of the web3 ethos, and it must remain at the core as crypto gets more mainstream adoption,” Wilson Wei, co-founder and CEO of CyberConnect, said to TechCrunch. “For decentralization to remain central to crypto and web3 as a whole, it begins with the infrastructure.” Decentralization boils down to data ownership, Wei said. The problem with Web 2.0 is that a handful of tech giants like Facebook and Instagram own most of the users’ data, but in web3, data should not be owned by the platform, he argued: “In order to remain decentralized, we need to ensure that applications are actually building services on top of decentralized infrastructures, which guarantee user data sovereignty.” This is more of an evolution that will run in parallel and complement one another, Jonathan Schemoul, co-founder and CEO of Aleph.im, said to TechCrunch. “There already are, and will continue to be, decentralized cryptocurrencies and applications that people use and support because of the benefits they provide over centralized options.” For example, Aave is a decentralized lending protocol that allows users to take out permissionless collateral-backed loans without requiring personal info or KYC/AML (know your customer/anti-money laundering) documentation, Schemoul noted. But in contrast, centralized crypto platforms like BlockFi also enable crypto collateralized loans and operate in a way that is permissioned, more intrusive and less transparent than decentralized alternatives, he added. In some ways, crypto will remain decentralized while trending toward centralization in others, Schemoul said. “That’s perfectly fine; web3 isn’t going to replace Web 2.0.” “The ethos is not simply decentralization for decentralization’s sake,” said Kurt Hemecker, COO of Mina Foundation and former head of business operations at Meta’s Diem Association. “On the contrary, the underlying decentralized design is what makes cryptocurrency revolutionary.” |
4 questions to ask before building a computer vision model | Eric Landau | 2,022 | 5 | 27 | launch of — a high-performing computer vision model that could produce predictions for real-time object detection — started an avalanche of progress that sped up computer vision’s jump from research to market. It’s since been an exciting time for startups as use cases for computer vision in everything from retail and agriculture to construction. With lower computing costs, greater model accuracy and rapid proliferation of raw data, an increasing number of startups are turning to computer vision to find solutions to problems. However, before founders begin building AI systems, they should think carefully about their risk appetite, data management practices and strategies for future-proofing their AI stack. Below are four factors that founders should consider when deciding to build computer vision models. It may sound crazy, but the first question founders should ask themselves is if they even need to use a deep learning approach to solve their problem. During my time in finance, I often saw that we’d hire a new employee right out of university who would want to use the latest deep learning model to solve a problem. After spending time working on the model, they’d come to the conclusion that using a variant of linear regression worked better. The moral of the story? Deep learning might sound like a futuristic solution, but in reality, these systems are sensitive to many small factors. Often, you can already use an existing and simpler solution — such as a “classical” algorithm — that produces an equally good or better outcome for lower cost. Consider the problem, and the solution, from all angles before building a deep learning model. Deep learning in general, and computer vision in particular, hold a great deal of promise for creating new approaches to solving old problems. However, building these systems comes with an investment risk: You’ll need machine learning engineers, a lot of data and validation mechanisms to put these models into production and build a functioning AI system. It’s best to evaluate whether a simpler solution could solve your problem before beginning such a large-scale effort. Before building any AI system, founders must consider their risk appetite, which means evaluating the risks that occur at both the application layer and the research and development stage. |
Daily Crunch: With Bungie under its wing, Sony plans to invest half of its PlayStation Studios development budget on live service games this year | Christine Hall | 2,022 | 5 | 27 | Happy Friday, Crunchers! It’s 27 May 2022, and we are slinking into a long weekend because it’s Memorial Day weekend here in the U.S. There’s no newsletter on Monday — Haje is going 🍷 wine tasting in Sonoma, and Christine is planning to spend Monday 🛋️ sitting on the sofa doing absolutely nothing, which we celebrate wholeheartedly. We’ll see you back here on Tuesday! Not sure what to do this weekend? Check out It’ll keep you busy for a few hours at least. — and Earlier this week, reported that , and raised backing from a16z. In today’s Chain Reaction podcast, and discuss . We’re comprehensively confused why anyone would place another bet on him, and we’ll no doubt be following his new startup closely. A few more gems for ya: / Getty Images Diesel prices alone are driving about 17% of the inflation we’re seeing today, and writes a rousing piece about , especially given that the economy is peeking over the cliff into an abyss whose depth equals our general optimism around climate at the moment. Perhaps that’s exactly what’s needed: Maybe when economic and climate interests align, we find the pot of “yay we can live on this planet for a few more years” at the end of the rainbow. |
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Steal this hot new summer look (it’s bacteria) | Harri Weber | 2,022 | 5 | 27 | Bacterial secretions might dye your future wardrobe, and that’d be an improvement. That’s because textiles usually get their hues from toxic chemicals, and the resulting wastewater — laden with dyes, acids and formaldehyde — destroys rivers, such as those surrounding , the capital city of Bangladesh. Wastewater treatment, when it happens, is just one of the energy-intensive (read: carbon-spewing) processes that make fast fashion possible. The environmental crises linked to textiles have given rise to several firms that aim to reimagine dyeing altogether. One such company, , just got a boost via a $22.6 million (£18 million) Series B round, led by Swedish fashion giant . Colorifix stands out for its progress in using microbes (such as E. coli) to naturally deposit dyes directly onto fabrics. Its microorganisms are engineered to produce specific colors and then brewed in vats like beer. A third-party life cycle analysis (paid for by Colorifix) found its dyes use at least 49% less water and 35% less electricity than conventional cotton dyeing processes, apparently slashing carbon emissions by 31%. That’s for natural fibers, but the upsides are greater for materials like polyester or nylon, which are generally made from petroleum and trickier to dye. “If you go to synthetics, we’re going to save way more than this,” co-founder and chief scientific officer Jim Ajioka added in a call with TechCrunch. So, uh, how does one persuade microbes to make dyes? I asked Ajioka, and he told me to check my shower for something red. “In a place like England, you’re gonna get mold, mildew and stuff growing on the tiles. And you’ll see red bacteria [known as ]. They secrete that color onto your tiles or your grout” he explained. “That’s what we do.” But to produce specific colors, Colorifix says it starts by identifying a specific color in nature, like a green hue found on a parrot’s feather. The company then taps online DNA databases to “pinpoint the exact genes that lead to the production of that pigment.” From there, Colorifix builds the DNA and inserts it into a small group of bacteria or yeast cells. Within a day they replicate millions of times over on a petri dish. “The resulting engineered microbe then acts as a tiny biological factory,” the startup said in a statement, ultimately producing dyes that stick to natural and synthetic materials. How Colorifix dyes textiles with bacteria. Colorifix Zooming out, the fashion industry consumes an enormous, basically unimaginable amount of water. A 2014 report found the industry goes through about 9 billion cubic meters of water per year — roughly five and a half times more than what consumes in the same period. Next to the images of Dhaka’s mutilated rivers, it’s possible the concept of dunking t-shirts into a bacterial soup suddenly seems more palatable. But if you still find the idea of microbes swimming with your clothes a little off-putting, you’re not alone. I did at first, and when I said as much to Ajioka, he gave me a mouthful. Following the dyeing process, Ajioka explained, “yeah, you have to put it through the wash. But, you know, you wash your clothes all the time. Think about the number of bacteria that are on your t-shirt right now. It’s disgusting,” he said, directing his comments at my shirt specifically. Then came the questions. “Think about it. How do you wash your clothes? What does laundry detergent do? It gets rid of proteins, carbohydrates and, fats and oils and stuff, right? That’s what it’s made to do, and what do you think microorganisms are made of? That’s why your clothes don’t stink after you wash them,” he added. Cleanliness aside, Colorifix is not the only firm aiming to develop cost-effective, bacteria-produced dyes to curb pollution. It’s joined by Paris-based and . So far none of these companies have brought the idea into mass production, making bacteria-dyed clothes hard — but not impossible — to come by. In December 2021, Colorifix dyes were used to produce a limited run of in two soft hues, dubbed blue cocoon and midway geyser pink. Just the former color was still available when this story was published, as either a $170 or $140 . Earlier, Colorifix dyes were used to make a , which was exhibited at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum in 2018. In other words, eco hypebeasts: good luck. Colorifix-dyed hoodie designed by Pangaia. Pangaia Beyond microbes, other businesses aiming to crack sustainable dyes include , a Cambridge, U.K.-based company that claims to have developed a waterless dyeing process; , a Dutch firm that dyes fabrics via pressurized CO ; and New York-based , which makes a cotton pre-dyeing treatment that apparently slashes water use and eliminates the . Along with H&M, investors such as , and also chipped in on Colorifix’s Series B round. With the new cash, the startup said it will triple the size of its team to about 120 staffers as it prepares to move its tech “into the supply chains of several leading players in the global fashion industry.” The company declined to share more when asked how long I’ll have to wait to buy a microbially dyed tee of my very own. |
Diesel is a horrible thing for an economy to depend on | Tim De Chant | 2,022 | 5 | 27 | inflation to heel? There’s no single, simple fix, of course, or we would have done it already. But a good place to start would be weaning the economy off gasoline and diesel. Prices for fossil fuels are through the roof. Gas prices are up over 75% since last year, and diesel is up 55%, . There are myriad reasons why — Putin’s war in Ukraine, an unexpected surge in demand following early pandemic shutdowns, an East Coast refinery that a few years ago and so on. The recent surge shows the folly of tying the transportation sector — which accounts for in developed countries — to highly volatile consumables that are broadly bought on a spot-price basis. Diesel prices alone are driving about 17% of the inflation we’re seeing today, to Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. Inflation in the overall energy sector was nearly 30% in April, according to the , more than triple anything else. Dropping the fossil fuel would bring inflation down nearly a percentage point. But how do you replace diesel, which is coursing through so much of our economy, from trucking to trains, ocean freight to agriculture? It won’t be easy, but it is pretty straightforward: electrification. An electrified economy powered by renewables is less likely to be subject to sudden price shocks of the sort that oil and gas can inflict. Here’s why. |
Tech layoffs top 15K in a brutal May | Natasha Mascarenhas | 2,022 | 5 | 27 | It’s been a rough month in the tech sector. We’ve rounded up after of layoffs, and according to aggregator , more than 15,000 tech workers have lost their jobs this month. Hopefully the sun will come out in June. A number of tech companies that enjoyed pandemic-related surges are facing a correction, due to a number of factors, from rising inflation, economic distress, war and shifting consumer taste buds. Companies including Meta and Twitter have publicly announced hiring freezes, while Snap confirmed this week that it is slowing hiring It’s worth noting that a change in hiring cadence, , could mean that headcount is net decreasing at the aforementioned companies, as people leave and companies are slow to refill those empty positions. On Thursday, the enterprise e-commerce platform Vtex announced that it would lay off 193 employees, who make up of the Brazilian unicorn’s team. “The world changes fast and we need to adapt,” founders and co-CEOs Geraldo Thomaz and Mariano Gomide de Faria wrote in . “The decision to reduce our workforce was taken as a strategic judgment around what organizational structure can deliver our adjusted priorities.” The founders stated that they don’t have another round of layoffs planned, and that they won’t cut investments into the development of their talent despite their “high-efficiency mindset.” Vtex also compiled an opt-in public spreadsheet for dismissed workers to share that they’re looking for a job. So, if you’re looking for Brazil-based fintech talent, . PayPal laid off dozens of employees from its San Jose headquarters, filings show. As first and later confirmed by TechCrunch, the layoffs impacted 83 employees. This is a very small fraction of PayPal staff, which counts over 30,000 staff. PayPal’s layoffs, while just now coming to the surface, were conducted around a week before the fintech confirmed that it was its San Francisco office. When asked about this round of layoffs, a PayPal spokesperson told TechCrunch that it is “constantly evaluating how we work to ensure we are prepared to meet the needs of our customers and operate with the best structure and processes to support our strategic business priorities as we continue to grow and evolve.” It did not directly speak to the filing and layoffs but said that it will continue hiring. PayPal did not offer specific details about severance packages offered to employees impacted. Getir — the $12 billion quick commerce startup — is globally. It’s been estimated that the Turkish company employs around 32,000 people in nine markets, which means these layoffs will impact about 4,480 people. The company also said it will slow hiring, marketing investments and promotions (not the HR kind, the coupon-for-hungry-customers kind). Just two months ago, Getir another $768 in funding, which valued the company at $12 billion as it sought to deliver groceries to customers within minutes. Like other startups, we may see that valuation drop. The delivery business is a challenging space in which to profit, and the macroeconomic downturn clearly isn’t helping. U.S.-based delivery companies have been impacted as well — the Philadelphia-based startup Gopuff also earlier this year and delayed its plans to go public. Latch, a proptech smart lock company that raised $152 million in known private capital before debuting on the stock market through a SPAC last year, Earlier this month, the startup cut 30 people, or 6% of its total staff, per an email obtained by TechCrunch. Now, as confirmed by a late Friday press release, Latch announced that it has cut a total of 130 people, or 28% of its full-time employee base. Sources say the cuts impact chief revenue officer Chris Lee and VP of sales Adam Sold. In the email viewed by TechCrunch, Latch CEO Luke Schoenfelder told staff that the first round of layoffs were conducted to “ensure Latch is on a path to sustainable growth.” He also said that Latch will be reducing some areas of the business, but we are unsure if that means cutting entire products or just shrinking resources behind each vision. TechCrunch reached out to Latch about this week’s layoffs but has not yet heard back at time of publication. What’s worse: missing your revenue goals, or filing with the SEC ahead of time to say that you’re going to miss your revenue goals? That’s what Snap did this week, noting in filing that it expects Q2 2022 revenue and adjusted EBITDA to fall below its expectations. CEO Evan Spiegel addressed Snap in a company memo, obtained by TechCrunch. Consistent with his comments during , he wrote that Snap’s revenue has fallen short due to inflation, as well as the impact of the war in Ukraine on advertising. Spiegel also indicated that last year’s continues to affect the company. According to the memo, Snap plans to hire more than 500 team members this year, in addition to 900 offers already accepted. That’s a 41% increase in hiring year-over-year, but it’s not as many new hires as the company had planned as it pushes some planned hiring into 2023. Spiegel’s letter specified that the pace of hiring for unopened roles will slow, but didn’t clearly state how current open roles may be affected. Spiegel added that Snap will backfill positions if current employees leave, so long as those roles are high-priority. Plus, leaders at Snap have also been advised to review their budgets to find ways to cut costs — hopefully, that doesn’t mean . Buy now, pay later company Klarna was hit with two significant bits of bad news this week. First, The Wall Street Journal that it’s cutting its valuation to raise new venture capital, which isn’t a great look for a company that has already raised . This news comes a little less than a year after the Swedish fintech giant raised $639 million, led by SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2, at a $45.6 billion valuation. Then, the other shoe dropped: Klarna co-founder and CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski announced to a staff of 7,000 that , meaning that 700 people will lose their jobs in exchange for severance pay. |
Found celebrates one year by bringing on four founders in a roundtable episode | Maggie Stamets | 2,022 | 5 | 27 | Found is officially one year old and we’ve got a brand new look! To celebrate we decided to have back four founders who made us think, laugh and have generally stuck with us since we talked with them. If we’ve learned anything from one year of talking with founders at all stages and in a multitude of industries, it’s that startups and the people who found them are always evolving. We get to talk to people at a fixed point in their journey, but in this episode, we get the opportunity to check back in and see how they’ve grown as founders and leaders. In what Jordan called a “founder smoothie,” we talked with Brie Code from who was on our second episode, Earl Cole from who was on the following episode, as well as Aditi Shekar from and Jelani Memory from who joined us a few months later. They talk about perspective shifts they’ve experienced in the past year, their different takes on fundraising and how they stay true to their respective core missions. and let us know a bit about yourself and what you think of Found. Connect with us: |
TechCrunch+ roundup: Cannabis investor survey, product ops, recurring revenue financing | Walter Thompson | 2,022 | 5 | 27 | The cannabis industry is doing very well in the United States: More than 75% of the population lives in a state where access is permitted, and the legal market is expected to generate $33 billion this year. A black market still eats into the industry’s bottom line, however, and a patchwork of state regulations artificially constrain the TAM for public and private companies managing grow operations, distribution, transportation, inventory control, testing and point-of-sale software. In California, dispensaries advertise on freeway billboards and budtenders are a frequent sight at weddings, but Anna Heim found that the industry still has a long way to go before it reaches maturity nationwide, largely because federal laws continue to bar cannabis-related business from using traditional financial services. To learn more about the underlying market forces and hurdles facing entrepreneurs and investors in this maverick industry, she spoke to four investors: Emily Paxhia joined Anna and me yesterday for a Twitter Space to discuss some of the survey’s topics in greater depth, describing cannabis as “today’s fastest-growing consumer packaged goods category.” Although delivery services are oversaturated at the moment, she said she’s actively recruiting professionals who have CPG experience in marketing, product management and other roles for Poseidon’s portfolio companies. Thanks very much for reading TechCrunch+ this week! We will publish on a reduced schedule over Memorial Day weekend; I hope you enjoy the break. Walter Thompson
Senior Editor, TechCrunch+
Lumigo Since its launch in 2019, cloud-native application monitoring and debugging platform Lumigo has raised $38 million from investors. Last November, we reported that Lumigo closed a $29 million Series A; this week, we published 20 of the company’s original 22-slide deck. “The team told me that its market analysis and financial projections were commercially sensitive,” wrote Haje Jan Kamps. “That makes perfect sense.” / Getty Images Product managers transform customer needs and business requirements into services and features that make money, but it’s a limited role. Even though PMs interact with customers and internal stakeholders from sales, marketing and engineering, they’re rarely empowered to implement best practices, select tools or manage operational aspects of the product pipeline. That’s changing as more companies carve out roles for product operations, writes Todd Olson, co-founder and CEO of software platform Pendo. “It’s similar to how sales and marketing ops help their departments,” he says, and “it’s a critical function for any company that wants to make its product the “center of the wheel.'” Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch / Getty Images Few founders are eager to fundraise in a down market, since investors inevitably will ask for more while offering less. But according to Harry Hurst, CEO and co-founder of Pipe, a startup with recurring revenue already has one valuable asset it can leverage. “By selling future revenue streams to investors for up-front capital, they get a steady return and you get to grow faster based on your already booked revenue, taking advantage of big opportunities and the time value of that capital as you scale.” / Getty Images As managing partner at Mayfield and a three-time founder, Navin Chaddha has seen two downturns. “I have invested in over 60 companies, and while many have gone public or been acquired, the journey has included pivots, near-death experiences and navigating through the 2008/2009 downturn,” he writes in a TC+ guest post. “Every era is different, but here are some tips for our new normal.” |
NJ talent firm exposed thousands of resumes, detailing immigration statuses and security clearances | Zack Whittaker | 2,022 | 5 | 27 | A New Jersey talent acquisition firm exposed the resumes and personal information of at least 30,000 prospective workers by leaving a database on the internet without a password. The database belongs to Voto Consulting, a North Brunswick company that finds U.S. jobs largely for Indian IT professionals. It’s not known exactly how long the database was exposed, but it was first indexed by Shodan, a search engine for exposed devices and databases, on May 10. The database was discovered by Anand Prakash, a security researcher and founder of PingSafe AI, who provided details of the database to TechCrunch. But because the database was exposed to the internet without a password, it was possible for anyone to search the database from a web browser. The database contained names, email addresses and candidates’ resumes — many of which contained detailed work histories, as well as other personal information, like home addresses, phone numbers and dates of birth. In many cases, resumes also revealed candidates’ immigration statuses, such as if they had a visa, work authorizations or citizenship, as well as details of a person’s security clearances required for some U.S. federal government jobs. Although the existence of a security clearance may not be necessarily a secret in itself, foreign governments have to exploit and blackmail those with security clearances for intelligence gains. TechCrunch contacted Voto chief executive Lynel Fernandes with a link to the exposed database on May 11, but we did not hear back nor did the company immediately secure the database. (One message sent with an open tracker showed our email was opened several times but ignored.) After not hearing back, TechCrunch notified the , a state government agency tasked with cybersecurity information sharing and incident reporting, which agreed to notify Voto by email and phone about the exposed database. The database has been offline since Tuesday, more than two weeks later. At the time the database was secured, it had grown in size by more than five-fold, listing more than 170,000 entries in total. |
Snapchat rolls out new ‘Shared Stories’ feature to make it easier to share memories | Aisha Malik | 2,022 | 5 | 27 | Snapchat is a new “Shared Stories” feature that is designed to make it easier for users on the app to collaborate and share memories. The feature is a new iteration of the app’s “Custom Stories” feature, which allows users to create a story and add friends to view and contribute to it. With the new Shared Stories feature, users who have been added to a group can add their friends as well to make it easier “for the whole soccer team, camp squad, or group of coworkers to get in on the fun,” Snap says. You can start a Shared Story by heading to your profile, tapping the new story option and then selecting “Shared Story.” As with all stories sent on Snapchat, Snaps sent to a Shared Story are automatically deleted after 24 hours. However, unlike regular friend Stories and Groups, there isn’t a chat component for Shared Stories. Snapchat says content is moderated using a combination of automatic language detection and community review tools. In addition, the app will notify users if they’ve joined a Shared Story with someone they have blocked. Snapchat says this will allow users to remain in control of who they share content with on the app. “Today, we’re introducing Shared Stories, a new way for Snapchatters to build community around the content they love to snap,” Snap said in a . “With this next generation Story, we’re hoping to help Snapchatters turn shared moments into shared memories.” The roll out of the new feature comes a few weeks after Snap’s Partner Summit took place, where the company announced several new features. Snap a new feature called Director Mode, aimed at providing easier access to Snapchat’s native creative tools for publishing video on its platform, including to its short-form video feature known as . The company also a number of new initiatives focused on using its AR technology to aid with online shopping. Most notably, the company is introducing a new in-app destination within Snapchat called “Dress Up” that will feature AR fashion and virtual try-on experiences. Snap also a new mini drone called “Pixy.” The launch also comes as Snap CEO Evan Spiegel wrote in an internal memo that the company will goals for this quarter and will also slow its pace of hiring. Although Snap continues to grow year over year, Spiegel says the company is growing more slowly than expected due to the overall economic environment. |
Rivian hires a new COO amid other leadership and organizational shifts | Jaclyn Trop | 2,022 | 5 | 27 | Rivian has hired a new chief operating officer to lead the restructuring and alignment of its operations, the automaker said Thursday. Frank Klein will join the company on June 1 as Rivian’s new COO to oversee the automaker’s production, manufacturing engineering and supply chain. The automaker also said its head of manufacturing engineering, Charly Mwangi, is leaving the company. The EV maker built 2,553 vehicles and delivered 1,227 in the first quarter, which means it must increase production more than tenfold for the rest of the year to meet its target. “Mr. Klein will oversee production, manufacturing engineering and supply chain,” Rivian said in a statement. “As we ramp production towards our 2022 target of 25,000 vehicles, we are confident these changes will strengthen our ability to more efficiently engage new and existing customers, extend our product offerings, and deepen our relationships with commercial partners. We are committed to maximizing the shift to electrified transportation while driving value for our customers and investors.” The Irvine, California-based electric vehicle startup has faced increasing production pressures since launching late last year in one of the largest IPOs in U.S. history. Its first-quarter losses widened nearly fourfold as the EV maker burned through cash battling supply chain constraints and production bottlenecks to bring its R1T pickup truck and R1S SUV to market and deliver its EDV commercial electric van to Amazon. Still, Rivian reaffirmed its 2022 production goal on a call with investors in May and announced a target to own more than 10% of the global market eventually. CEO RJ Scaringe said that demand is outstripping supply, with more than 90,000 orders in the U.S. and Canada. The automaker’s top priority now is ramping up production at its factory in Normal, Illinois, where it plans to introduce a second shift this summer. Together, its two factories will ramp up to a projected annual capacity of 600,000 vehicles. The company is expected to break ground on a factory this summer where it will eventually produce vehicles on its future R2 platform, “a more accessibly priced mid-sized SUV targeting global markets.” The $5 billion facility in Georgia received the state’s . |
Tesla won’t set up manufacturing plant in India until allowed to first sell and service cars, Elon Musk says | Manish Singh | 2,022 | 5 | 27 | Tesla won’t set up a manufacturing plant in India until it is first allowed to sell and service imported cars in the South Asian nation, the carmaker’s chief executive Elon Musk said Friday, more than a year after an Indian state said that the electric carmaker was planning to open a plant in the southern part of the country. Responding to an individual on Twitter, who had asked for an update on Tesla’s manufacturing plant in India, Musk , “Tesla will not put a manufacturing plant in any location where we are not allowed first to sell & service cars.” Tesla and the Indian government have been engaging for more than two years to evaluate a pathway for the electric carmaker to enter the world’s second most populous nation but are stuck in a deadlock. The Indian government has insisted that Tesla commits to opening a manufacturing plant in the country, so that it can assemble cars locally in the nation, and follow high import duties until it does if it wishes to sell its vehicles. The U.S. firm, on the other hand, is seeking lower import taxes in India so it can first test the market by selling cheaper imported electric vehicles before committing to a manufacturing base. Tesla But the two are now at a standstill. “If Elon Musk is ready to manufacture Tesla in India, then there is no problem,” India’s Road Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari said at an event last month. But manufacturing cars in China and selling them in India is not a “good proposition,” he added. Several global brands, including Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Toyota and Hyundai have expanded their businesses in India in recent years. In a tweet earlier this year, Musk said that Tesla was “still working through a lot of challenges with the government.” Audi has . Several Tesla executives in India were recently reassigned to focus on Indonesia and other Asian countries, newspaper Economic Times earlier this month. In a separate tweet, Musk disclosed to another user that SpaceX was from the Indian government for launching Starlink in India. The company had hired Sanjay Bhargava, a former PayPal executive, to lead Starlink’s operations in India last year. He said that the firm, which had briefly started taking pre-orders in India, planned to deploy more than 200,000 active terminals in over 160,000 districts in India by the end of December 2022. Bhargava weeks after New Delhi ordered the SpaceX division to stop taking orders for the devices, as it doesn’t have the license to operate in the South Asian market. |
What’s the TAM for paid newsletters? | Alex Wilhelm | 2,022 | 5 | 27 | that Substack, the popular newsletter publishing tool, called off fundraising plans for a Series C after a raise at its price target failed to materialize. The company’s revenue base, when compared with its hoped-for valuation, was too small to support the numbers that the startup had in mind. This is not a unique story. Many startups that raised at high prices last year will run into snags as they try to attract capital at new, higher valuations. The in this case has been the topic of conversation in technology circles for months now. In short, market conditions that led to a venture capital bonanza last year have slowed or reversed, leaving many startups sitting on private-market valuations that no longer translate to present-day investor appetite. Substack is striking a combative tone with media coverage of its fundraising exploits, telling The New York Times — which — that its comment on the story was its jobs page. Certainly, Substack still has capital and is hiring, but that it wanted to raise more funds is also illustrative. The Substack Series C saga is a good moment to refresh ourselves on just how much the market has changed. And what’s more, we can go back in time and , grading what we mathed out when it last raised. Everyone is going to look a little silly, so let’s get into it! Recall that Substack last at what described as a $675 million post-money valuation. Here’s the latest from the Times on what the company wanted to raise in a Series C: Substack held discussions with potential investors in recent months about raising $75 million to $100 million to fund the growth of its business, said the people, who would speak only anonymously because the talks were private. Some of the fund-raising discussions valued the company at between $750 million and $1 billion, they said. Notably, if Substack had raised $75 million at a $750 million post-money valuation, it would have been effectively a flat round from its Series B. That that valuation appears out of reach today implies that the only way that Substack would be able to raise a new round of equity funding would be with a valuation cut. Down rounds are not popular, so it isn’t a surprise that the company put its fundraising plans on hold at least for now. Why did Substack struggle to attract high eight to low nine figures of capital at a nine- to 10-figure valuation? Because it had a seven-figure top line last year, the Times reports, writing that “Substack has told investors it had revenue of about $9 million in 2021.” That nugget lets us do some interesting math: |
TechCrunch Podcasts this week: Scaling web3, bulls and bears, falling tech valuations and UFOs | Matt Burns | 2,022 | 5 | 27 | TechCrunch is more than just a site with words. We’re also building a growing stable of podcasts focused on the most critical topics relating to the startup and venture capital worlds. To help you find the right show for your interests, we’ve compiled our audio output from the week. And if you are more into the written over the spoken word, well on the above topics as well. Welcome to The TechCrunch Podcast, where you’ll hear everything you need to know about the week’s top stories in tech from the people who wrote them. This week our host, Managing Editor Darrell Etherington, talks with Taylor Hatmaker about the congressional hearing about UFOs, in which Pentagon experts say definitively UFOs are real and that sightings reports are way up. And Kirsten Korosec joins us to talk about all the news that came out of TC Sessions: Mobility. Plus a rundown of the week’s top news on TechCrunch. Articles from the episode: Other news from the week: Welcome back; this week Lucas and Anita dive into the latest mega-fund from venture giant Andreessen Horowitz and some of the… interesting bets that they’re making, including one in disgraced WeWork founder Adam Neumann’s new crypto startup. Lastly, they recap crypto exchange FTX’s big entry into stock trading, which comes just a week after the firm’s young CEO made a massive bet on Robinhood. In their interview this week, Lucas and Anita talk to Grace Isford. Isford is an investor at Lux Capital, where she focuses on the infrastructure and security opportunities for blockchain startups. We talk about some of the recent big hacks and whether consumers can feel safe betting on crypto. Subscribe to the Chain Reaction newsletter to dive deeper: Helpful links: Happy one year of Found! To celebrate our anniversary, we welcomed back four founders whose stories really stuck with us since we talked to them. In what Jordan called a “founder smoothie,” we talked with Brie Code from who was on our second episode, Earl Cole from , who was on the following episode, as well as Aditi Shekar from and Jelani Memory from , who joined us a few months later. They talk about perspective shifts they’ve experienced in the past year, their different takes on fundraising and how they stay true to their respective core missions. and let us know a bit about yourself and what you think of Found. Connect with us: Hello and welcome back to , a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. Happily we were once again at full strength this week, with and chatting, and handling production. You can tell from the topic list today that we are in an odd time. There are myriad signals that the startup market is slowing down. And there are some counter-narrative data points that paint a more complex picture. Where do you stand in your own viewpoint? Well, read on for some data to consider: Hugs from us to you, and we will talk to you next week! This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic, think about a question and unpack the rest. This week, asked: The inimitable teamed up with her to interview , the founder and CEO of about this timely topic. The question comes after Natasha’s recent Startups Weekly column, The column looked at a series of memos that venture capitalist firms sent to portfolio companies about the market downturn. Some were hopeful, some were simple and others were a vibe check as straightforward as, Can you tell us your ARR and cash-burn in writing? Pretty please? To flip the script, as we do here on Equity, we’re bringing in the founder perspective to fact-check these memos and tell us what it’s really like to be a founder. Ogundu told us what he’s rethinking, the importance of honesty and what to do before considering a layoff. It’s not too often that we have guests on the show, so when we do, you know it’s going to be a good one. Hello and welcome back to , a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. It’s Monday, which means that and were back as a team to cover the biggest, boldest and baddest technology news. We are once again back with your weekly kickoff! Here’s what we got into: |
A ping-pong match between bulls and bears | Alex Wilhelm | 2,022 | 5 | 27 | Hello and welcome back to , a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. Happily we were once again at full strength this week, with and chatting, and handling production. You can tell from the topic list today that we are in an odd time. There are myriad signals that the startup market is slowing down. And there are some counter-narrative data points that paint a more complex picture. Where do you stand in your own viewpoint? Well, read on for some data to consider: Hugs from us to you, and we will talk to you next week! |
Manish Maheshwari, former Twitter India head, leaves new startup | Manish Singh | 2,022 | 5 | 27 | Manish Maheshwari, the former head of Twitter India, is leaving the startup he co-founded just six months ago following disagreements with co-founder and investors. “I am moving out of Invact to first take a break for a few months and then pursue new opportunities. It is heartbreaking for a founder to leave the startup, like a mother leaving her baby. I am going through the same emotion,” Maheshwari, who served as the startup’s chief executive and managing director, in a tweet. Maheshwari left Twitter late last year to with Tanay Pratap, a former Microsoft employee, TechCrunch first reported. The startup, which has raised $5 million to date, seeks to launch a metaverse where cohorts of students could take classes. But the startup has so far struggled to ship a product as the two founders locked horns and disagreed on the vision, according to a startling email Pratap sent to its investors earlier this month. Invact, an edtech whose chief executive is former Twitter India head (Manish), explored sale earlier this month but could not find a buyer, according to an email the other co-founder (Tanay) sent to investors. Tanay describes "irreconcilable differences" with Manish in the email. — Manish Singh (@refsrc) Maheshwari, who owned more equity of the startup than Tanay, according to a person familiar with the matter, assumed broader control over the startup’s direction. “We are now standing at crossroads exploring possibilities such as (a) cutting the burn rate and pivoting to another idea, (b) letting one of the founders take full charge, or (c) returning the unspent capital to investors,” Maheshwari earlier this week following media reports of the tension between the two founders. Things suddenly became more complicated after Gergely Orosz, an early backer of Invact, publicly called out Maheshwari for allegedly not listening to any investor, reneging on exit agreements and holding the startup “hostage.” “Manish has been bullying Tanay into silence, threatening to use the company funds of $1.7M – including our angel investment money – to sue him, should Tanay speak ill of him in public,” Orosz wrote to investors this week in an email, reviewed by TechCrunch. “This broke the straw with me, as that includes my money: which I never invested to be used as an instrument of a cofounder bullying the other one. Manish keeps walking back on promises he made to named investors, then breaking them. Names investors were meeting the terms he put up to accept the exit settlement so the company can continue operating. He then walks back on these terms. He has been doing this for weeks,” he wrote. Invact raised a $5 million round earlier this year from Arkam Ventures, Antler India, Picus Capital, 2am VC and dozens of angel investors at a valuation of $33.5 million. It was putting together a new round at a $100 million valuation, according to a source familiar with the matter. Later it explored sale of the business, but could not find a buyer. “The decision to part ways was not an easy one, but ultimately, Manish and Tanay had diverging visions for the company’s long-term prospects. Invact will continue and under leadership of Tanay will pursue its vision to make quality education accessible via Metaversity,” the startup said in a statement today. In his Twitter thread today, Maheshwari described Tanay as “brother.” |
Indian fintech Jar eyes $50 million investment | Manish Singh | 2,022 | 5 | 27 | Indian fintech Jar, which , is in talks to raise new funding as it looks to scale its product and expand its offerings. The Bengaluru-headquartered startup is engaging with several investors to raise about $50 million at a $350 million valuation, according to four people familiar with the matter. Asked for comment on Wednesday, Misbah Ashraf, co-founder of Jar, said it was too early to comment. Tiger Global, an existing backer of Jar, is positioning to lead the one-year-old startup’s Series B funding, the sources said, requesting anonymity as the details are private. Folius Ventures and Paramark are also engaging to invest in the new round, the people said. Jar, which operates an eponymous app, is helping millions of Indians begin their investment and saving journeys. The startup has amassed over 7.5 million registered users, it disclosed to investors last month. Nearly a billion Indians have bank accounts today, but they have never made any investment. Part of the reason is confusion, explained Nishchay Ag, co-founder and chief executive of Jar, in an earlier interview with TechCrunch. “Their world is littered with ads of different financial instruments,” he told TechCrunch in an earlier interview. For decades, banks and mutual funds have been trying to tap India masses with their products. Despite the hundreds of millions of dollars they have sunk in to win the market, they have been able to court fewer than 30 million individuals. “Manufacturing a product is one thing and being able to sell it is another. All these institutions are good at manufacturing. For selling, you have to be aligned with the individual’s persona, idiosyncrasies, insecurities, cognitive load and the cultural significance. That’s an art and science by itself,” he said at the time. Jar is tackling this by choosing a financial instrument that is familiar to most Indians: gold. For over a century, Indians have been stashing gold in their houses, treating the yellow metal as both good investment and status symbol, he said. To For generations, Indians across the socio-economic spectrum have preferred to stash their savings — or at least a part of it — in the form of gold. In fact, such is the demand for gold in India — Indians stockpile more gold than citizens in any other country — that the South Asian nation is also one of the world’s largest importers of this precious metal. Jar fetches a tiny amount each time a user makes a transaction. It rounds up an individual’s daily spendings and puts some money aside as investment. Users’ investments in digital gold is backed by physical gold of the same amount and they can choose to withdraw that much gold or liquidate their investments at any time. |
BVNK grabs $40 million for its crypto banking services | Romain Dillet | 2,022 | 5 | 11 | Cryptocurrency startup (pronounced “bee-vee-en-kay”) has closed a $40 million Series A funding round at a $340 million post-money valuation. Interestingly, Tiger Global is leading the round despite being in the news because they’ve experienced during this year’s tech stock sell-off. Other investors in today’s funding round include The Raba Partnership, Avenir, Kingsway Capital, Nordstar, Concentric, Base Capital and various business angels. BVNK signed its term sheet last month. BVNK offers banking services and payments for crypto-native businesses. Companies using BVNK can accept payments in both fiat and cryptocurrencies, hold hundreds of different currencies and crypto assets, and send funds all around the world. Before landing with this product offering, the BVNK team has been working on a consumer platform. It was a more traditional crypto exchange with a focus on emerging markets and remittance. “We launched originally a retail business and now it’s a purely B2B business. We spent the last year head-hunting the best talent in the crypto space. We now have 120 people in the company,” BVNK co-founder and CEO Jesse Hemson-Struthers told me. While cryptocurrencies are currently having , many businesses have been looking at ways to start supporting cryptocurrencies in one way or another. But it’s been a difficult process as many banks around the world simply don’t want to work with cryptocurrencies at all. “Financial services are really not made for crypto at all,” co-founder and Chief Product Officer George Davis told me. BVNK is targeting both crypto native and crypto curious companies, such as “payment companies that are being pushed to accept crypto,” Davis said. The main hook to get new customers is banking. You can use BVNK to replace some of your traditional bank accounts. From your BVNK account, you can buy, sell, send and receive both fiat currencies, such as EUR, GBP and USD, as well as cryptocurrencies, such as BTC, ETH and USDC. On top of that, BVNK has built a payments service. It is both a way to collect payments in crypto and a fiat-to-crypto on-ramp for people who want to buy crypto assets. Businesses using BVNK can leverage this API with their own customers. The fiat on-ramp specifically is quite interesting, as BVNK wants to compete directly with . If you’re not familiar with MoonPay, it’s a popular on-ramp API for other products. For instance, many crypto wallets embed MoonPay in their apps so that users can buy crypto assets with a debit card. BVNK thinks it can build a cheap alternative thanks to open banking. Instead of relying on debit cards, BVNK asks people to log in with their bank account information and initiate an instant payment from there. This way, BVNK saves on card processing fees. So far, BVNK has attracted around 120 customers. “We’ve been profitable as a business,” Hemson-Struthers told me. The company says it currently processes over $2 billion in annualized payments volume. |
A venture firm gets rewarded for selling at the market top | Connie Loizos | 2,022 | 5 | 11 | It used to be that venture capitalists couldn’t sell their stake in a portfolio company before it sold or went public without raising questions about the outfit’s prospects. As startups began staying private longer, VCs and management teams grew more comfortable with selling some of their holdings to new investors, but many VCs are likely right now wishing they’d sold even more over the last year or so. One firm that’s happy it pulled the trigger on two of its own deals is , a 15-year-old, U.S.-Israeli venture firm that specializes in seed-stage cybersecurity investments and that just closed its newest and biggest fund to date with $400 million in capital commitments. In March 2021, when the now five-year-old cybersecurity asset management startup Axonius was raising a at a $1.2 billion valuation, YL Ventures — the outfit’s first investor — sold its stake for $270 million to ICONIQ Growth, Alkeon Capital, DTCP and Harmony Partners. The amount was more than three times the size of YL Ventures’s $75 million debut fund, which had backed the outfit and through which YL Ventures wound up investing $15 million in Axonius altogether, including through several special purpose vehicles. “Multiples were so high a year ago that we felt like, in normal conditions, we’d need [more time] to get to that same outcome,” says YL Ventures founder Yoav Leitersdorf, who is based in Mill Valley, California. “There was a lot of demand for Axonius shares and looking back today, with this current market . . . ” he trails off. YL Ventures similarly sold much of its stake in the four-year-old cloud security company Orca Security to new buyers when Orca extended its Series C round last fall, a $550 million tranche that boosted the startup’s valuation by to $1.8 billion. “We didn’t sell our full position,” Leitersdorf says, but his firm wrung a whopping $250 million out of the deal nevertheless. YL Ventures Indeed, 2021 was a good year made even better when another of YL Ventures’s portfolio companies — the healthcare IoT security startup Medigate — was sold to the industrial cybersecurity vendor Claroty back in December as it was closing a co-led by SoftBank. Leitersdorf’s firm walked away from the deal with more than $100 million. They’re all solid returns for a firm that now has $800 million in assets under management and has seen earlier exits, including Hexadite’s to Microsoft in 2017 and the sale of the container security startup Twistlock, to Palo Alto Networks in 2019 for $410 million. (YL Ventures was Twistlock’s biggest shareholder, investing so early that it plugged just $12 million into the company over its four-year run as an independent outfit to build its position.) So what’s YL Ventures’s secret sauce? It has been from the start — and continues to be — investing as early as possible in a very specific type of company. As we reported the we covered the firm several years ago, almost all the founders in YL Ventures’s portfolio have not only served in the Israel Defense Forces, but specifically within its 81 and 8200 units, elite parts of the organization that have become the training ground for some of the buzziest cybersecurity companies in the world. The units reportedly accept less than one out of every 100 high school graduates, so it’s little wonder that venture firms with a cybersecurity focus then try to cherry-pick among these when their service is completed. YL Ventures just seems to be particularly adept at succeeding in these efforts. Leitersdorf credits Ofer Schreiber, a senior partner and the head of the firm’s Israel office, for much of the heavy lifting on the recruiting front, bragging that YL Ventures has “first dibs at every seed deal coming out of Israel” largely because Schreiber is “so deeply networked there.” He also says the firm’s success to date depends heavily on the work of the firm’s other senior partner, John Brennan, who oversees a large network of chief information security officers — 120 of them, says Leitersdorf — who collectively receive 5% of the firm’s carried interest in exchange for vetting deals and sharing what pain points are not being addressed at their own companies. These CISOs aren’t limited partners in the fund, says Leitersdorf, but he says that the outfit’s investors include ultra-high-net-worth individuals from largely the U.S., Europe and São Paulo, Brazil, and you can imagine there is at least some crossover. Leitersdorf also tells us that YL Ventures promoted two colleagues as part of this new fundraising process. Sharon Seemann — who also served in Unit 8200 — has been named a partner. She oversees the firm’s marketing output. Michael Cortez, who is focused on business development and is “part of the group that’s writing checks,” says Leitersdorf, has also been named partner. Leitersdorf — who remains the firm’s sole general partner — meanwhile says the collective plan for the team is to keep doing what it’s doing, which is to specialize in Israeli cybersecurity startups of all kinds, at a far more deliberate pace than many of its rival firms. In fact, the idea is to fund just three new startups per year, or 10 startups altogether from the new vehicle. Notably, YL Ventures has invested in just 30 companies altogether since it was formed. Just one, Leitersdorf says, has been a “wipe-out.” |
Joywell Foods raises $25M to bring sweet proteins to market | Christine Hall | 2,022 | 5 | 27 | When consumed in moderation, sugar is not bad for us, and humans’ ability to detect sweetness is etched into our DNA, but with the abundance of it in today’s food and drinks, we are getting more than we should. Companies have created alternatives to sugar over the years, like Stevia, while others have tapped into technologies to come with new ways of sweetening foods in a way that is healthier. Some of those include , , MycoTechnology and Sensient. Food tech startup has been in this sector for nearly a decade, building up a sweet proteins platform and is nearing the commercialization of its first products, boosted by a cash infusion of $25 million in Series B funding. The round was led by Piva Capital, with participation from B37 Ventures, Global Brain Corporation and existing investors Khosla Ventures, Evolv Ventures, SOSV’s IndieBio and Alumni Ventures. As a part of the investment, Piva partner and co-founder Adzmel Adznan will join Joywell’s board. The new investment brings Joywell’s total funding to $38 million since the California-based company’s inception in 2014 by Alan Perlstein and Jason Ryder. Joywell uses a proprietary microbial fermentation process to produce sweet proteins that are nearly identical to those found in exotic fruits and berries. Though these proteins taste like sugar — and are around 2,000 times sweeter than sugar — they don’t impact blood sugar levels or gut microbiomes, CEO Ali Wing told TechCrunch. “We’re biologically predisposed to crave sugar, so it’s not something we should actually feel so bad about,” she added. “If you really look at consumption today, over 70% of consumers are actively seeking to reduce sugar in their diets and the No. 1 culprit for that is daily added sugars. We just need to solve it differently, and that’s the beauty of technology and what we are doing.” When Wing joined the company about a year ago from the healthcare industry, Joywell had just one protein. Now it has about half a dozen proteins derived from fruits, like the serendipity berry and katemfe fruit, and is working on a wide range of products. Wing said she was not able to go into exactly what those products were, but the company is already working on canned drinks and foods, like chocolate, and will essentially be able to plug into any food category that includes sugar. In addition to providing a healthier alternative, Joywell is also out to be more sustainable, saying that “for every one percent reduction in sugar production results in approximately 650,000 acres of sugar cane fields saved.” The company is still pre-revenue, so there was not much in the way of growth metrics Wing could speak about, but she did say she joined to lead Joywell’s commercialization, and the new funding will accelerate the R&D and scale-up efforts. “A lot of what I’ve done in my nine months here is a lot of consumer testing around multiple product formulations to build the insights for the launch,” she added. “The most important next steps are very much in the regulatory process and have several regulatory milestones in front of us. We are also adding proteins and will be building a pipeline around those.” |
Synergies raises $12M to give factory managers an AI analytics assistant | Rita Liao | 2,022 | 5 | 11 | There’s no lack of startups around the world trying to make industrial activities more efficient with artificial intelligence. Some invent robots to assist or replace manual labor, while others use machine learning to help businesses discover insights. falls into the second category. founded Synergies in 2016 in Boston to provide easy-to-use AI-powered analytics tools to medium-sized manufacturers. Having worked at Foxconn in Shenzhen in the late 2000s helping the Apple supplier improve yield rate, or reduce the percentage of defective products, using data analysis, Chang realized that not every factory has the financial prowess to spend tens of thousands of dollars on digitization. Synergies’ vision and recent growth have won investor support. The company was mostly bootstrapping during its early years, but it recently accepted venture funding to accelerate hiring, market expansion, and product development. It secured $12 million from a Series A funding round led by , which was formerly called Nokia Growth Partners and is backed by Nokia, as its name implies. Private equity firm New Future Capital also participated. Synergies now operates a team of about 70 employees across Shanghai, Taipei, Guangzhou, Singapore and Boston. The startup declined to disclose its valuation but said it’s serving nearly 100 customers, 80% of which are in Greater China, including mid-sized factories with thousands of workers run by Foxconn and Fuyao, one of the world’s largest auto glass producers. Chang told TechCrunch that Nokia and Synergies are working on some projects in the early stage, though the pair doesn’t have a large-scale partnership yet. The Finnish telecoms titan, to Chang’s knowledge, has been promoting “industrial 5G” worldwide, which is to bring next-generation connectivity to manufacturing. So it won’t be surprising to see the two working more closely together in the future. Synergies’ product could work well with 5G-powered factories that are constantly collecting and analyzing data in the cloud. It provides what’s called an “augmented analytics” platform to help manufacturers optimize efficiency on three fronts — supply chain, yield, and production capacity. By analyzing operational data, Synergies’s software can make suggestions to managers, for example, recommending how much supply they should procure, or how to quickly change a product line to maximize capacity at the lowest cost. Once the advice is put into practice and new data is reaped, Synergies’ machine learning systems can analyze and keep refining its algorithms to help factories improve performance. “Such machine learning isn’t rocket science for AI experts, but for an average small- and medium-sized factory in China, the overhead for creating a comprehensive ‘data middle platform’ is too high because it requires the coordination between the IT department, project managers, and AI experts,” suggested Chang, an MIT graduate with a Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer science. “Most small and medium factories only keep a small team of IT staff, not to mention a team of dedicated AI scientists.” “Compared to advanced manufacturers in the West,” Chang continued. “Chinese factories, even the ones that are massive now, have only been around for four or five decades. They are a lot more price-sensitive, operate at lower margins, and want quicker returns on investment. So it’s hard to ask them to spend $10 million upfront on building a data platform.” Using data analytics and AI to refine business decisions also addresses the problem of high turnover in the manufacturing industry, Chang explained. As population growth slows in China, factories are struggling to recruit and retain workers, meaning it’s hard to preserve workplace knowledge as well. “It’s not a business that sees the kind of crazy growth as, say, crypto companies,” Chang maintained. “But I believe it’s a meaningful business because we are creating real changes on the ground.” |
A law inviting Texans to sue social media companies over ‘censorship’ is back | Taylor Hatmaker | 2,022 | 5 | 11 | A controversial Texas law that would open social media companies up to lawsuits from aggrieved users just notched a surprise win. A trio of federal appeals court judges issued the ruling Wednesday, which pauses a temporary injunction that blocked the law from taking effect last year. The law, , would prohibit tech platforms from removing or restricting content based on “the viewpoint of the user or another person” or “the viewpoint represented in the user’s expression” — some extremely broad criteria with a lot of room for interpretation. Two tech industry groups, NetChoice and the Computer and Communications Industry Association, pursued an injunction against the law last year, which was granted in December. During a , one of the judges inexplicably told the trade groups that their tech industry clients were “internet providers” not websites. “Encouraging lawsuits against companies exercising their First Amendment rights would violate the Constitution and put Texans at greater risk online,” the CCIA said during oral arguments on Monday. CCIA President Matt Schruers slammed Wednesday’s ruling for violating the First Amendment. “Digital services have a right and a commitment to their communities to take action against problematic content on their platforms,” Schruers said. “That stands whether the content is racism and abuse or anti-American extremism or foreign propaganda.” Proponents of the Texas law, crafted to punish tech companies for perceived anti-conservative bias, may have notched a win on Wednesday, but things certainly aren’t settled for HB 20 given its potentially massive implications for social media platforms operating in the state. NetChoice has already stated its intention to appeal the order. “HB 20 is an assault on the First Amendment, and it’s constitutionally rotten from top to bottom,” NetChoice’s . “So of course we’re going to appeal today’s unprecedented, unexplained and unfortunate order by a split 2-1 panel.” A federal judge blocked from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis last year. In the decision, federal judge Robert Hinkle noted that the law “expressly” violated Section 230, which allows internet platforms to moderate content as they see fit. The judge also noted that ironically the law could violate social media companies’ own First Amendment rights, even while ostensibly pushing a free speech agenda. |
Japan’s Zeals raises $38.8M to scale its chat commerce platform | Kate Park | 2,022 | 5 | 11 | , a Tokyo-based startup that lets businesses communicate with their customers via its chat application, said Thursday it has secured $27.2 million (3.5 billion yen) in equity and $11.6 million (1.5 billion yen) in debt. The latest round brings its total funding raised to $41.4 million, the company said without disclosing its valuation. led the Series E equity funding, with participation from , a venture investment arm of Z Holdings, Japan Post Capital and Salesforce Ventures. Mizuho Bank and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group also joined in its debt financing. Conversational commerce, a term coined by former Uber employee , enables online businesses to sell their products and services through messaging and chat apps like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. The coronavirus pandemic has fueled messaging apps to be the medium for personal, business or commerce to interact with each other. The global market of conversational commerce, also known as chat commerce or conversational marketing, is expected to increase to $290 billion by 2025, up from $41 billion in 2021, representing a 590% rise for the next four years, according to . The research also shows that North Asian countries such as China, Japan and South Korea would account for more than 90% of chat commerce spending by 2025. Founded in 2014, Zeals currently serves more than 400 enterprises, including Toyota dealerships, Shiseido and NTT Docomo. Zeals Its business has grown at a compound annual growth rate of 139% in revenue since 2017, Zeals CFO told TechCrunch, but he did not provide a baseline for that growth. Watanabe also said that Zeals’ average conversion ratio stands at 9.6%, meaning that roughly 1 out of 10 customers who use the Zeals chatbot service experience transactions. Founder and CEO of Zeals pointed out that the startup has communication designers using its internal no-code bot builder to customize its service for users. Zeals focuses on promotions to enable its users to increase revenue by attracting more customers while other competitors offer mainly customer support services, Shimizu added. The latest round will help Zeals accelerate new product development, diversify go-to-market channels and support overseas expansion. Shimizu told TechCrunch that the company had businesses in Taiwan, Thailand and the Philippines before the COVID pandemic but has temporarily pulled back. Zeals is in talks again with a number of clients to re-enter overseas in Asia and the U.S., Shimizu added. |
FCC proposes funding Wi-Fi on school buses | Devin Coldewey | 2,022 | 5 | 11 | FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel has that federal funding be provided to equip school buses with Wi-Fi, potentially closing the homework gap by that much more. I don’t know if any kids are going to do any work at 7:20 in the morning or right after the last bell has rung, but it certainly can’t hurt. The proposal would allow the use of E-rate program funds, generally set aside for school tech and connectivity costs, to be used for purchasing wireless hot spots or other methods for getting the buses connected. “The ‘homework gap’ is still a hard fact of life for millions of schoolchildren in urban and rural America. Wiring our school buses is a practical step we can take that is consistent with the history of the E-rate program. This common sense change could help kids who have no broadband at home,” said Rosenworcel in a statement announcing the proposed ruling. $35 million has already been spent on this through the FCC’s , and the declaratory ruling (as the proposal is formally called at this point) found that the costs would more than justify the benefits. Though it’s easy to think of scenarios like a kid uploading their homework on the bus as silly or typical of teenage procrastination, connectivity is a serious problem around the country. And some kids have pretty long bus rides! If Wi-Fi at home is cutting out, and you can’t access the school servers on mobile, what are you supposed to do, stop by the library on the way to homeroom? Being able to polish off that essay and upload it from the bus (after a bit of feedback from their seatmate, of course), or skimming through that lecture one more time before the test, could be actually helpful. Once they have it, they’re going to rely on it. It makes sense these days much more than even five years ago because mobile networks and integrations for things like cars and buses are far cheaper and more standard. If they can put Wi-Fi on subway trains, or on company shuttles, we can put them on our big orange buses. And you know we might even get a little WAN party going. |
Singapore-based Good Startup raises $34M fund to invest in alternative protein companies | Catherine Shu | 2,022 | 5 | 11 | Good Startup founders Gautam Godhwani and Jayesh Parekh , a Singapore-based venture capital firm focused on alternative protein, has closed its latest fund. Consisting of $34 million, the new fund, called Good Protein Fund I, included participation from Vinmar International founder and chairman Vijay Goradia; former head of finance and strategy for Fidelity Investments Harris Komishane; and INSEAD professor of entrepreneurship Bala Vissa. Founded in 2021, Good Startup wants to remove animals from the global food system. It also invests in non-food startups: For example, companies that make alternatives to leather. So far, Good Startup has invested in 21 companies out of a target of 35 startups. Good Startup managing partner Gautam Godhwani told TechCrunch that the firm invests primarily in early-stage companies, with an average check size of $500,000. Some of its current portfolio companies include , which produces cultivated fish products and has operations in Singapore and Hong Kong; , a producer of plant-based “clean-label” chicken; , which is focused on 3D-printing capabilities to produce plant-based and cultivated meats; , another plant-based chicken startup that Godhwani said achieves price parity with conventional chicken through a highly automated production process and is targeted at the food service sector; and , a lab-grown leather producer. |
Rivian shares pop even as Q1 losses widen amid EV production ramp up | Jaclyn Trop | 2,022 | 5 | 11 | Rivian saw its first-quarter losses widen nearly fourfold as the EV maker burned through cash battling supply chain constraints and production bottlenecks to bring its electric vehicles to market. Rivian, which is now delivering its R1T pickup and R1S SUV to consumers and EDV commercial electric van to Amazon, reported net losses of $1.59 billion in the first quarter, compared with $414 million in the same period last year. The company also reported a first-quarter loss of $1.77 per share on revenue of $95 million. On an adjusted basis, Rivian reported reported a loss of $1.43 a share for the first quarter. Those results, particularly on the revenue front, missed analysts expectations. Per data , analysts expected Rivian to report a loss of $1.44 per share (adjusted) on revenue of $130.5 million in Q1 2022. Despite the disappointing numbers, Rivian shares popped in after-market trading by more than 7%, perhaps as investors held onto some of the rosier news to come out of the Q1 earnings. Rivian to build 25,000 vehicles in 2022 and announced a target to own more than 10% of the global market eventually. The automaker did keep somewhat restrained in how bright its future will be, cautioning in a letter to shareholders that supply chain constraints on semiconductors and other components serve as a significant bottleneck. “Since March 31, 2022, we have been forced to stop production for longer periods than anticipated, resulting in approximately a quarter of the planned production time being lost due to supplier constraints,” the company said. The EV maker built 2,553 vehicles and delivered 1,227 in the first quarter, which means it must increase production tenfold for the rest of the year to meet its target. That compares with the 909 vehicles Rivian delivered in the fourth quarter last year, its first as a public company. Rivian said demand is outstripping supply, with more than 90,000 orders in the U.S. and Canada for its battery-electric R1T pickup truck and R1S SUV. To that end, it will launch a new reservations system that doesn’t allow customers to configure their vehicle until closer to the delivery date. The company is expected to break ground on a second factory this summer where it will eventually produce vehicles on its future R2 platform, “a more accessibly priced mid-sized SUV targeting global markets.” The $5 billion facility in Georgia received the state’s . In the meantime, Rivian said its top priority is ramping up production at its factory in Normal, Illinois, where it plans to introduce a second shift this summer. Together, its two factories will ramp up to a projected annual capacity of 600,000 vehicles. Rivian, which debuted as a public company in November at a market cap higher than both Ford and GM, saw its stock in freefall this week when after an insider lockup for the stock expired Sunday. |
Fewer than 7 Days until TC Sessions: Mobility | Alexandra Ames | 2,022 | 5 | 11 | We’re less than seven days away from , our first in-person mobility event since 2019. The event takes place on May 18-19 in San Mateo, California with online analyst commentary on May 20. It’s the must-see mobility event of the year, and you have until Monday, May 15, to save $200 on a . Here’s a quick reminder of what goes on and why you don’t want to miss out. The FOMO is real. You’ll hear and learn from mobility’s leading founders, CEOs, VCs and policymakers as TechCrunch editors shove the hype aside to ask tough, thought-provoking questions during one-on-one interviews, panel discussions and fireside chats. You’ll walk away with a deeper understanding of trends and market influences that can help you position your business for success. Here’s what serial entrepreneur Parug Demircioglu, CEO at Invemo and a partner at Nito Bikes, told us about his experience. “We were planning to launch Nito Bikes in the U.S., and the conference was an excellent opportunity to gain a solid grasp of the micromobility space. We heard from industry experts, learned about current and future trends and checked out the competition. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience.” Don’t skip the smaller, topic-focused roundtable discussions. They let you really dig into a subject, connect with other founders and expand your network. You can find the entire agenda . What’s better than watching amazing speakers onstage? How about checking out the latest and greatest in early-stage mobility startups. We’re expecting more than 50 startups in our expo hall, which means opportunities galore to get your hands on the newest in transportation tech. All work and no play? Not a chance. So you’re inspired by what you’re seeing onstage and in our expo area, and you want to take that next step to finding your next investor or co-founder, but you’re not sure what to do next. We’ve got that covered. Take it from 2019 TC Sessions: Mobility attendee Karin Maake, senior director of communications at FlashParking: “TC Sessions Mobility offers several big benefits. First, networking opportunities that result in concrete partnerships. Second, the chance to learn the latest trends and how mobility will evolve. Third, the opportunity for unknown startups to connect with other mobility companies and build brand awareness.” We have networking opportunities aplenty, whether it be on the expo floor, at one of our intimate, topic-driven roundtable sessions with industry leaders, or on our AI-powered platform. It’s a smart, targeted and efficient way to meet the right people — in person and/or online — and maximize your time. Can’t make it in person, but want to soak up all the great content and networking? We’ve got that covered with our Online Only ticket offering. Enjoy recorded content on May 20 and meet fellow attendees on CrunchMatch. takes place in person on May 18-19 in San Mateo, California, followed by an online event on May 20. and you’ll save $200. Now, get ready to connect with the influential people who can help you drive your business forward.
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Daily Crunch: Terraform Labs CEO goes public with strategy to re-peg sliding UST stablecoin | Christine Hall | 2,022 | 5 | 11 | It’s Wednesday, May 11, aka the start of GooglePalooza, which the company insists on referring to as the far less entertaining “ .” Our “GoogleCrunch team” has prepared a bevy of stories on Google’s hardware and software lineup, including Pixel Watch, Pixel 6A — a tease of the Pixel 7 — and a new tablet. All the details are below in the Big Tech section. – and Few things blow our minds as much as the sheer scale of Tiger Global — the firm took a battering with in losses. reports it has . Yikes. As tech reporters, we love the rapid rise and we observe with occasional glee the unscheduled descent of the startups we cover. and remind us in today’s episode of the Equity podcast that while founders couldn’t have seen a pandemic coming, they should have been better prepared for the world returning to whatever “normal” means. Or, as they put it: . Sure, go on, I’ll have another: / Getty Images (Image has been modified) In her latest TC+ column, angel investor Marjorie Radlo-Zandi addresses a question that’s on every founder’s mind these days: What is my current valuation? For early-stage startups, finding that figure requires more art than science, since pre-revenue companies are still gathering data and fine-tuning their products. “Many traditional valuation methods, such as discounted cash flow, aren’t as useful for valuing early-stage startups,” she writes. “This means investors have to gauge other factors that aren’t so easily measured.” Don’t miss out on these beauties: |
After Netflix’s tough quarter, Disney+ gains 7.9M more subscribers to reach 138M total | Lauren Forristal | 2,022 | 5 | 11 | The Walt Disney Company reported earnings for its second fiscal quarter ended April 2, 2022, announcing a 7.9 million increase of subscribers for Disney+, which brings the total to 137.9 million subs. This was ahead of forecasts of 5.2 million new subscribers and follows a tough quarter for its streaming rival Netflix, which recently reported a loss of and predicted a 2 million drop for the second quarter. Across all of Disney’s streaming services (Disney+, Hulu, ESPN+), total subscriptions exceeded 205 million, a quarterly net increase of 9.2 million driven by its flagship streamer. Hulu contributed 45.6 million this quarter (up 10% year over year), and ESPN+ added 1 million for a total of 22.3 million (up 62% year over year). Bob Chapek, chief executive officer, The Walt Disney Company, that these positive results “once again proved that we are in a league of our own.” He in the earnings call that the company is still on track to reach 230 to 260 million subscribers by fiscal 2024. Revenues for the quarter grew 23% to $19.25 billion and earnings of 25 cents per share, exceeding Wall Street expectations of . However, despite this, the Mouse House took a $1.02 billion hit related to ending content licensing agreements, and shares dropped in after-hours trading Wednesday. Disney wrote in the report that it ended the agreement “in order for the company to use the content primarily on our direct-to-consumer services.” While it wasn’t clear what the specific programming was, it is probable that it was the former deal with Netflix, which included Netflix’s slate of namely “Daredevil,” “Jessica Jones,” “Luke Cage,” “Iron Fist,” “The Defenders,” and “The Punisher.” Known for its kid-friendly content, some parents have been upset with the streamer for adding more after it launched stricter parent controls. Chapek stated during the call that 50% of Disney+ subscribers are families without kids. He continued by saying that the streaming service will continue to strive for a broader audience and recognizes Disney+’s “unique ability to attract viewers from a range of demographic groups.” In addition, there is a good amount of upcoming content like “ ” appearing on the service in a few weeks and Marvel’s “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness,” which is estimated to be released on the platform in July. Subscribers also had the chance to watch new titles this quarter, such as “Moon Knight,” “Turning Red” and reboot “Cheaper by the Dozen.” Another way it’s broadening its audience is by adding a . By doing so, Chapek added that the company could be increasing content investment, and as a result, “We believe that’s going to give us the ability to adjust our price.” He goes on to say, “As we expand Disney+ across multiple price points and using some of our other services, we can see the additive nature of an ad-driven service that enables us to keep the price lower, of course, that’s made up for by the additional revenue that we will get per user on the advertising spending. So we believe that we can move up and cascade up our net price over time given the tremendous value that we started with, the increased price-value relationship, and all of the new content. But we’re pretty bullish about that.” This may suggest that we will see a price increase in the future. The media conglomerate is planning to launch the lower-priced ad-supported option in late 2022 or 2023, whereas its competitor Netflix may be for its own . Looking forward to the summer, Disney+ is expanding to across Europe, West Asia, and Africa. The rollout will start next week on May 18 in South Africa. “As we look ahead to Disney’s second century, I am confident we will continue to transform entertainment by combining extraordinary storytelling with innovative technology to create an even larger, more connected, and magical Disney universe for families and fans around the world,” said Chapek. |
Bird, Lime use Google’s ARCore to power scooter parking solution | Rebecca Bellan | 2,022 | 5 | 11 | Bird and Lime are launching new tools to help alleviate the problem of shared electric scooters parking inappropriately, and both are powered by Google. Both Bird and Lime’s systems, named Bird Visual Parking System and Lime Visual Positioning Service (VPS times two!), respectively, rely on Google’s ARCore Geospatial API, allowing the companies to geo-locate parked scooters and e-bikes within “less than a meter accuracy,” Bird said on Wednesday at Google I/O, Google’s annual developer conference. This tech comes as shared micromobility operators are furiously trying to innovate on ways to alleviate the “problem” of inappropriate scooter parking, despite the fact that and bikes are improperly parked. According to Google, Bird and Lime received early access to Google’s new ARCore tech, which was also announced at I/O as an API that allows developers to remotely create and deploy augmented reality experiences using precise location and orientation on a global scale. Similar to the camera positioning technology of , VPS will prompt riders to take a quick scan of the surrounding area using their smartphone. Then the system will compare a rider’s images against Google’s vast database of Street View images, while also leveraging Google’s 3D scanning and augmented reality technology, to determine a rider’s location and if the scooter is parked correctly, according to Bird and Lime. “Stationary objects such as buildings and signs are used as reference points, while more dynamic objects like people and vehicles are ignored,” reads a statement from Bird, which noted that Bird is considering rewarding good parking with automatic ride discounts. Bird VPS is already being piloted in New York City, San Francisco and San Diego by a random sampling of riders, with plans to expand to new cities in the coming weeks and months, according to the company. Bird claims it operates in more than 400 partner cities around the world, which likely includes the cities in which it Google offers Street View coverage in 87 countries. Out of the over 200 cities that Lime serves, its VPS is live now in six: London, Paris, Tel Aviv, Madrid, San Diego and Bordeaux. Similar to Bird, Lime’s pilot involves testing the tech with a portion of riders. The company The new tech comes months after , which has the capability to detect and correct unsafe riding behavior, as well as monitor inappropriate parking. That system was originally being piloted in San Diego and Milwaukee, but Bird says the company is scaling the tech to new markets, like West Hollywood and Madrid. |
DJI’s new Mini 3 Pro drone hits the aerial photography sweet spot | Darrell Etherington | 2,022 | 5 | 11 | introduced a new drone — its most capable ever to squeak under the 250 gram limit that keeps operators free from a whole host of headaches and restrictions for flight (note that local laws and rules still do apply — being small doesn’t mean you can do anything you want). The drone is the first in the series to add that “Pro” moniker, and it does a lot to earn it, making this the best overall value yet in the consumer/enthusiast drone space for people who want portability, affordability and image/video quality. The DJI Mini 3 Pro is still small enough to earn its name, but it is a bit larger than prior iterations. While the drone’s weight comes in at 249 grams with the included standard battery pack, the wingspan in particular is a lot larger than the original Mini, in particular, when the arms are extended for flight. This provides additional flight control capabilities, and it only barely changes the drone’s profile when it’s folded for carry, so it’s definitely a welcome design trade-off. DJI has not only refined the aerial engineering here, they’ve also packed an impressive gimballed 1/1.3 inch sensor camera in the Mini 3 Pro, which can capture images at up to 48 MP in RAW format, and record video in 4K at up to 60 fps, with a slow-mo mode that captures 120 fps footage at full HD (1080p) resolution. The new DJI Mini 3 Pro drone in flight. Darrell Etherington The “Pro” also comes into play with the formats that the Mini 3 Pro offers: You can record video in D-Cinelike mode, which offers a wealth of color information for tuning the color mix of your video to your liking afterward in programs like DaVinci Resolve. This can give you a cinematic look that is frankly astounding when you consider it’s coming for a drone that slips pretty easily into a jacket pocket. Another “Pro” feature that DJI has introduced to this size category for the first time: obstacle detection and avoidance. The Mini 3 Pro gets the company’s Advanced Pilot Assistance Systems 4.0, meaning you’re far less likely to have to scale a tree to retrieve it because it got caught up in some branches. Other features include the ability to pivot the camera via the gimbal to shoot vertical video, making this the ideal TikTok drone, subject tracking, 4x digital zoom (which unlocks some creative video shooting capabilities), panorama shooting and 34 minutes of run time on the standard battery (plus 47 minutes possible on the extended juice of the optional Flight Battery Plus — which also tips you over that 250 gram limit, I should note). At first glance, the Mini 3 Pro doesn’t deviate much from DJI’s tried-and-tested approach to drone design; it’s a four-rotor aircraft, mostly made up of that central body, with extendable arms and integrated stubby landing gear. There are some big obvious changes versus prior Minis, however, including at the front of the drone, where the usual bulbous overhang that covers the camera makes way for a scooped out, “hammerhead”-like look with the orientation cameras flanking the gimballed 24 mm-equivalent, f/1.7 camera below. The DJI Mini 3 Pro (right) and the DJI Mavic Mini (left) folded. Darrell Etherington This probably helps eke out weight savings to allow the Mini 3 Pro to boast its impressive specs while still staying on the fair side of those aviation rule restrictions. It also means the drone ships with a larger, more bulbous protective hood attachment to keep the gimbal and camera safe and stable in transit. This was my one knock on the drone’s design — the gimbal is loose when the drone is powered down, which is understandable to protect the motors, but it means you have to fight it to a certain extent to get it to line up correctly with the protective hood before it clips in. The DJI Mini 3 Pro (right) and the DJI Mavic Mini (left) with arms extended. Darrell Etherington DJI has obviously learned a lot from years of trying to make the most of the sub-250 gram drone category, however, and it really shows in the Mini 3 Pro. The rotors don’t have the easy removal clips that come on larger models, but once again this is a worthwhile trade-off. For a few minor inconveniences, what you get is a drone that doesn’t require a major packing logistics operation to take along with you — and one that captures images and videos of a quality that won’t leave anyone but the most demanding pro users feeling like they should’ve brought along a beefier machine. A note here on the controller options — the Mini 3 Pro comes with the RC-N1 controller by default (though there’s a controller-less option as well to save a few bucks if you already have one), which is a great controller in its own right, but which requires you to supply the viewfinder in the form of your connected smartphone. The DJI RC package comes with that brand new controller as well, and if you’re on the fence, you should absolutely go for that one: The DJI RC has a built-in display, and essentially runs an integrated Android phone to operate the DJI Fly app. It’s a very compact and well-designed device, with excellent display quality and so many fewer headaches when it comes to fiddling with hardware smartphone connectors. More about the DJI RC in the next section. I’ve already alluded to the quality of the DJI Mini 3 Pro’s image and video capture a few times, but in case it wasn’t clear: This thing more than delivers. The 48 megapixel images offer new levels of detail and printing options, and the RAW capture means you can really get a lot more out of your still captures when editing after the fact in programs like Lightroom. Images are also much less noisy than they have been from prior iterations of the Mini, owing to the larger sensor and the larger pixel size on the sensor itself. Low-light capture has never been a particular strength of these drones, but DJI has done a good job of prioritizing improvements in that area on the Mini 3 Pro, and it shows. DJI Mini 3 Pro JPEG from the camera, auto-settings. Darrell Etherington Auto mode delivers images that really impress, and for most users there’s probably not much reason to delve into manual mode. But for advanced enthusiasts and pros, the manual modes offers the ability to tweak to your heart’s content, which can result in some truly unique captures that stand out from the crowd. Custom image modes including the panorama feature are excellent for unique applications like large-scale prints, and the Mini 3 Pro software makes actually getting good ones a relative breeze. Speaking of breeze, when it comes to flight control, the Mini 3 Pro seemed to have no problem handling wind with aplomb. One thing I noticed quite a bit on my own OG DJI Mavic Mini was that it was frequently complaining about wind speeds and stability as a result; the Mini 3 Pro, even at altitudes above 400 feet, never gave any indication it was struggling with that particular issue. The days I flew were relatively calm at ground level, so your mileage may vary, but it’s definitely improved versus previous generation hardware. DJI Mini 3 Pro sample image, auto-settings. Darrell Etherington As much as the DJI Mini 3 Pro is optimized for stills capture, the new video options are a major upgrade versus what this category could previously do. 4K/60, HDR, full HD 120 fps slow-mo, vertical video and the D-Cinelike color profile all add up to a drone that can do it all, whether you’re an amateur filmmaker trying to make the next art-house classic, a YouTuber who puts a premium on production value, or a TikTok creator who wants to add another dimension to their content. Subject tracking works reliably well, and combined with vertical video and modes like the “dronie” aerial selfie capture option, you can dive into a lot of creative options for novel posts on any platform. As for actually flying the drone, it’s a bit hard to evaluate from the perspective of a newcomer since I’ve now been flying DJI aircraft since the original Mavic. But it definitely feels intuitive and simple, with the added bonus that the obstacle avoidance protections do kick in when large objects get in your way, potentially saving you from an expensive accident. You can tweak settings like how fast the camera tracks in order to refine the end product and compensate for inexpert or jerky joystick movements, but out of the box the DJI Mini 3 Pro seems tuned to produce good end results for a wide range of users. As mentioned, the DJI RC controller option also really ups the game in terms of the actual experience of flying the drone. My main headache with DJI drones in the past has been the less-than-elegant experience of connecting a smartphone to the controller, getting everything working properly and settled into the grip optimally. The DJI RC changes that into a truly seamless “it just works” experience, and you can connect the controller to any WiFi network (including tethering to your phone in the field) to keep both it and the aircraft up to date with firmware and flight restriction maps. Image quality and live video feed are high-res and excellent, viewable even in direct sunlight, and it’s absolutely not something you can give up once you experience it. Along with a boost in performance, DJI’s latest Mini drone also got a fairly significant bump in price: The DJI Mini 3 Pro starts at $669, and that’s without a remote control. $759 will get you the Mini 3 Pro and the RC-N1 (which requires you to bring your own phone). The best option is of course the most expensive one, but I do think it’s the one most people should consider — that’s the DJI Mini 3 Pro plus the DJI RC for $909. As reviewed, my unit also included the DJI Mini 3 Pro Fly More Kit, which provides two more 34-min batteries, a hub to charge all three batteries at once, extra propellers and a handy shoulder bag that perfectly fits the drone, controller and everything I just mentioned, which is an added $189. DJI Mini 3 Pro sample image. JPEG with auto settings. Darrell Etherington All told, the DJI Mini 3 Pro kit I reviewed costs a total of around $1,100 — nearly double the price of the DJI Mini 2 Fly More combo, which still retails for $599. But for what you get, particularly with the improvements to image and video quality, as well as the inclusion of the obstacle avoidance system, that’s well worth the price delta. Ultimately, the Mini 3 Pro is probably better compared to something like the DJI Air 2S, which costs $1,299 for the Fly More combo. With that option, you do get a larger sensor and better, 5.2K video recording, but most users likely won’t appreciate the differences there, and the Mini 3 Pro still manages to sneak under that critical 250 g limit, which the Air 2S does not. DJI’s pace of innovation means it can be tough to decide when to jump on as a consumer (I myself have three of my own prior generation drones, including the original Mini). But what it’s put together in the Mini 3 Pro seems like a package that has so few compromises it should satisfy even the most discerning enthusiast for years to come. |
Google debuts Cloud Run jobs for containerized, scripted tasks | Kyle Wiggers | 2,022 | 5 | 11 | During a developer keynote at Google I/O 2022, Google unveiled , an extension of Google Cloud’s service for developing and deploying containerized apps using languages including Go, Python and Java. Cloud Run jobs are designed for containers that run to completion and don’t serve requests, such as data processing and administrative jobs, and when multiple copies of a container must run in parallel. Cloud Run launched in 2019, adding to Google Cloud’s then-rapidly-growing serverless compute stack. As the demand for serverless , it would appear that expansions like Cloud Run jobs are an attempt to beat back against rivals like Azure and Amazon Web Services. Available in preview starting today, Cloud Run jobs can be used to run a script to perform database migrations or other operational tasks, like sending invoices every month. Relative to other platforms that support long-running jobs, Cloud Run jobs start quickly after creation, Google claims, with simple containers starting in as little as 10 seconds. To use Cloud Run jobs, developers create a job, which encapsulates all the configuration needed to run the job including the container image, region, environment variables. Then, they set up the job to run on a schedule or manually run the job, creating a new execution of the job. During the preview, Cloud Run jobs supports up to 50 executions from the same or different jobs concurrently per project per region. Users can view existing jobs, start executions and monitor execution status from Cloud Console’s Cloud Run Jobs page; Cloud Console doesn’t currently support creating new jobs. Cloud Run jobs arrives alongside an updated , Google’s popular back-end-as-a-service platform, and , a new fully managed PostgreSQL database service. Arguably the more interesting of the two, AlloyDB features — as my colleague Frederic Lardinois writes — a custom machine learning-based caching service to learn a customer’s access patterns and then convert Postgres’ row format into an in-memory columnar format that can be analyzed significantly faster. |
Erm, Google, that’s not how you write Arabic | Haje Jan Kamps | 2,022 | 5 | 11 | I’ve been learning Arabic for a couple of years, after one of my previous startups had a large-ish team of developers in Egypt. Even though I’m only a novice, I did spot something truly bizarre in today’s keynote at Google I/O: A bunch of the languages on the slide are … wrong? The text in Arabic reads “Sudanese Language,” but is written the wrong way and with script that makes Arabic speakers raise an eyebrow or two. Swiss German (usually written as “Schweizerdeutsch”) is written in what seems to be a local accent trying to mimic an accent (not unlike if you write “what’s that all aboot” to try to mimic a Canadian accent — you can, but it isn’t typically the done thing). It’s unclear whether the Google Translate team was trying to get clever and show some local knowledge here by flexing writing in local accents, but that seems … odd. Regardless, putting any of these translations into Google Translate results in translations that are more correct than what ended up on Google CEO Sundar Pichai’s slide. Utterly baffling. puts it well: Congrats to for getting Arabic script backwards & disconnected during 's presentation on *Google Translate*, because small independent startups like Google can't afford to hire anyone with a 4 year olds' elementary school level knowledge of Arabic writing. — Rami Ismail (رامي) (@tha_rami) If Google had wanted to get it right, it should have gone with something along the lines of لهجة سودانية — which means “Sudanese dialect” or “Sudanese slang.” It’s clearly a world of difference from the copy that ended up on the slide. On top of that, it turns out that a bunch of the other languages in non-Latin script are garbled beyond recognition: The Urdu translation makes little sense, and there’s a number of other face palm moments in there as well. breaks it down in this tweet: I made a helpful annotation for everyone. Every single one that's not Latin- or Cyrillic-based is wrong (at least a little bit). I struggled a bit with displaying the Bengali script, but I made it work better than did this "Google" startup, whatever that is — Sam Ettinger (@DHammarskjold) Google Translate is undoubtedly a powerful tool to get the gist of an article or some words, but it’s pretty bizarre to see a flurry of mistakes all on a single part of the presentation. If you want to see the moment in the Google IO presentation for some excellent head-scratching linguistic action, . |
Google Play targets emerging markets with prepaid app subscriptions and more | Sarah Perez | 2,022 | 5 | 11 | At the Google I/O developer conference today, the company introduced several changes designed to make it easier for Android app developers to generate revenue via subscriptions, particularly when trying to reach users in emerging markets. Most notably, the company said it will to offer users the ability to subscribe via prepaid plans that essentially provide access to an app and its services for fixed amount of time the developer sets. The users would then be able to buy top-ups in the app when their subscription ran out and they had the funds to continue. Google said the feature would make sense in regions where pay-as-you-go cellular plans are standard. In those markets, consumers are already used to the prepaid model, so extending it to apps could help to boost developers’ subscription revenues. However, prepaid subscriptions could also help to target other use cases as well — like subscription-adverse customers who are hesitant to get locked into ongoing charges and who want more control over when and how much they’re spending on their mobile apps. Google also expanded pricing options with the launch of “ultra-low” price points to reach users in emerging markets. Last March, Google had reduced the minimum price limit for products in more than 20 markets across Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia-Pacific, allowing developers to drop prices down to as low as 10 to 30 cents (USD). At the time, the company explained these “sub-dollar prices” would allow developers to reach new potential buyers by adjusting pricing to “better reflect local purchasing power and demand.” Now, Google says developers can drop prices to as low as 5 U.S. cents. This would allow developers to also run local sales and promotions and support various micro-transactions, like in-app tipping. While these changes will help to better target Android app users in emerging markets, Google made other improvements to app subscriptions, as well. The company said it’s making it easier to sell subscriptions on Google Play by allowing developers to configure multiple base plans and special offers, in order to reduce the overhead of having to manage an increasing number of SKUs as developers tweak how they want to sell subscriptions with offers. In this setup, a developer can establish multiple base plans each with its own billing period and renewal type — like monthly or annual auto-renewing plans or monthly prepaid plans. Then, for each base plan, they can create multiple special offers across the subscription lifecycle. For example, they could create an acquisition offer for a limited time free trial, an upgrade offer to move from a prepaid plan to an auto-renewing tier, or even a downgrade offer to help retain a subscriber who may be looking to cancel as they’re not using their full subscription benefits. Google also offers an that can be used to remind users to update their payment information when their payment method is declined, it noted. The company last year announced it would begin to support other payment methods, including both cash and prepaid plans. In the time since, it’s expanded its payment method library to include over 300 local payment methods in 70 countries, and added eWallet payment methods such as MerPay in Japan, KCP in Korea, and Mercado Pago in Mexico, Google said. |
Google Play adopts App Store-like features including in-app events and custom product pages | Sarah Perez | 2,022 | 5 | 11 | At Google’s I/O developer conference, the company rolled out a series of updates for Android app developers who publish to Google Play. Among these were two high-profile changes to its Google Play app marketplace, custom store listings and in-app events, which follow just last year. Google had been offering A/B testing for since 2015 — a feature that allows developers to see which text and graphics would best convert users. Apple later adopted a similar feature when, at last year’s Worldwide Developer Conference, designed to help developers to try out different app screenshots, videos and even app icons to try to appeal to different types of users. Developers could segment a certain percentage of App Store traffic to these cohorts to see which product pages performed better before deciding which page should be their default. Apple last year also announced a related feature called that lets developers create different product pages to highlight different app features, each with its own unique URL to be used in external marketing channels. Today, Google is following suit and essentially launching the same thing with Custom Store Listings. Instead of simply testing different product pages, Android app developers will be able to make up to 50 custom store listings for their apps. Each page will have its own analytics and deep links available. Notably, this is more listings than Apple’s solution offers, which is currently Google explains developers can use this feature to display different listings to users based on where they’re coming from. For example, a developer with a recipe-finding app could target ad campaigns to U.S. users based on U.S. holidays, by showcasing recipes for Thanksgiving or Fourth of July. But it could target users from other markets at different times with recipes related to their own cultural traditions. Apple last year also introduced an App Store feature, , to allow developers to promote real-time happenings going on inside their apps — like special events or even just seasonal deals. Google Play is now rolling out its own take on this feature, as well. With the launch of what it’s calling “ ,” developers will be able to submit content for featuring on the Play Store, including major updates for their app or game, in-app events and limited-time offers. Google says LiveOps can drive 5% more 28-day active users to apps and deliver 4% higher revenue for those using the feature compared with those who don’t. The feature is in an invite-only beta testing phase for the time being. While these changes were the highlights among those designed to help developers target, acquire and reengage their users, Google also a few other notable Google Play updates. The company said the Play Store would be updated to help people find the best tablet-optimized apps with new large-screen focused editorial content and a separate review and rating system for large-screen applications. Google Play will also later this year be updated to look better on tablets and foldable devices. Google For developers, Google also which lists over 100 popular SDKs and which app permissions they use, so developers can determine if they adhere to Google Play policies and help fill out . The company said it will soon launch a new Play Console page dedicated to deep links to put all the information and tools for deep links in one place. It also improved its Store Listing Experiments feature (aka A/B testing) to allow developers to see their results more quickly, with more transparency and control so they can better understand how long each experiment may need to run. And beyond this, it rolled out features focus on improving app quality, including a new Developer Reporting API for accessing Android vitals metrics and issues data outside the Play Console; support for viewing vitals data at the country level; and Google said it’s making it possible to view vitals alongside Firebase Crashlytics. It updated the Play Console by adding revenue and revenue growth metrics to and overhauling its to include install data and filters by new device attributes like shared libraries. It said it’s now easier to test apps on different form factors including Android Auto and soon, Wear OS. was updated to use Google Cloud Key Management and the ability for any app to perform an app signing key rotation in the event of an incident or as a security best practice from the Play Console. And finally, Google’s In-app Updates API will now let users know if there’s an update available within 15 minutes instead of up to 24 hours. |
Google updates its Firebase back-end-as-a-service to make app development faster | Frederic Lardinois | 2,022 | 5 | 11 | At its I/O developer conference, Google today announced a number of updates to Firebase, Google’s popular back-end-as-a-service platform. The focus here is mostly on deeper integrations with the rest of Google’s developer tools and platforms, as well as the overall developer ecosystem, as well as a number of updates that will help developers better secure their applications. One of the first major announcements is that Android Studio will now feature a new App Quality Insights window that gives developers direct access to Firebase’s Crashlytics crash data, which allows developers to see their stack traces and identify the specific lines of codes that triggered a crash. “Now, developers can be in the flow as they are building features. They can also see, ‘oh, this line of code in my last release had a bunch of errors.’ They can click into that, see the Crashlytics data in terms of the severity of crashes, which devices they might have happened on, etc., so that they can really quickly address those issues and reproduce them,” explained Firebase product lead Francis Ma. Flutter developers, too, will get better Crashlytics support. They’ll now be able to set up Crashlytics for their apps with just a few clicks and get improved crash reports, as well as the ability to log fatal errors in a Flutter app and receive crash alerts from Crashlytics. Google For web developers, Firebase it making it easier for developers to use modern web development frameworks like Angular and Next.js but helps them more easily deploy these web apps. Modern web frameworks may be very powerful, after all, but they have also introduced a lot of complexity when it comes to deploying apps. Now, developers can simply use the “firebase deploy” command and Firebase will automatically figure out which part of an application to deploy where, without having to worry about dependencies. Currently, this works for Angular and Next.js, but the team plans to add support for more frameworks in the future. Across platforms, Firebase is also making it easier for developers to use third-party APIs by allowing them to customize Firebase extensions to use services like Stripe and Twilio. The existing pre-packaged extensions make it easier for developers to tap into third-party APIs, but as is so often the case, developers regularly hit edge cases or want to do something slightly different. “We recognize that developers may use twenty to even forty APIs in their apps — and while extensions have been working really well for developers to quickly deploy these solutions, we’ve heard from them that they would like more customizations to be able to take this baseline deployment and really make it their own,” Ma said. Google The team is also now adding third-party extensions for Snap, to allow users to log in with Snap, for example, as well as new Stream extensions to help developers implement chat in their apps and a new RevenueCat extension for managing in-app subscriptions. On the security side, Firebase is now integrated with the new Play Integrity API, which allows developers to trust that a given Android app that is communicating with its back end hasn’t been manipulated (something that often happens with games). For Apple developers, the Firebase team is improving its support for Apple’s Swift language. Swift support isn’t entirely new, but as Ma noted, the team has now reached a milestone where it has full coverage of Swift. “Apple developers that are Swift-only can expect the sort of the intuitive, more native support in using the Firebase SDKs Swift,” said Ma. |
Voice control at last: Hey Sonos, play the ‘Breaking Bad’ theme song | Haje Jan Kamps | 2,022 | 5 | 11 | If you’ve always wanted Giancarlo Esposito — the actor playing the meth-slinging Los Pollos Hermanos boss Gustavo Fring from “Breaking Bad” — to guide you through your choice of music, ho boy does have a treat for you. Esposito lent his voice to a Sonos speaker near you, alongside its long-awaited voice control feature set. The new voice functionality will be available as a free update for supported speakers. The company’s implementation of voice functionality is privacy-forward, and promises to keep the dulcet tones of your top-secret conversations to itself; the voice command systems are entirely on-device, without shipping clips of your voice or transcripts to Sonos. A nice touch in a world where it seems that the other voice-controlled speakers take great pleasure in livestreaming your commands to Google, Amazon or Apple servers. You can shout at your Sonos speakers to control Apple Music, Amazon Music, Deezer and Pandora at launch, with other services to follow in due time. “Sonos is committed to delivering new experiences that effortlessly connect listeners to the content they love,” said Joseph Dureau, vice president, Voice Experience, Sonos. “One of the most natural ways to connect to your music is with your voice, but when we speak to our customers, we hear that many of them have concerns about privacy and are dissatisfied with the accuracy, speed and ease of use of existing voice services. Sonos Voice Control delivers the experience our customers want without compromise — one that puts speed, accuracy and privacy on an equal footing.” Sonos Voice Control is available in the U.S. starting at the beginning of next month. French customers will see the functionality later this year, and from there the company is planning a gradual global rollout. Keep an eye (well, ear) out for updates! |
Android 13 Beta 2 is rolling out today with new user controls, privacy features and more | Aisha Malik | 2,022 | 5 | 11 | At Google’s I/O developer conference, the company that it’s releasing the second public beta of Android 13 today. The beta comes with a number of new features and user controls, along with updates to privacy and security. With Android 13, Google says it’s giving users more control over what personal information they share and more detailed control over what files apps can access. Instead of permitting access to “Files and media,” there are two new categories you can control access to: Photos & videos and Music & audio. The company is also rolling out a new option that lets you select the exact photos or videos you want to grant an app access to, as opposed to having to share your entire media library with an app. Google Google is also looking to give users more control over how they engage with apps and notifications, as apps must get your permission before sending you notifications in Android 13. The company is also reducing the number of apps that require your location. For instance, users will no longer have to grant location to apps to enable Wi-Fi scanning. Although users already receive an alert when an app accesses their clipboard, Android 13 will go beyond this and automatically delete your clipboard history after a short period of time to prevent apps from seeing old copied information. Google also plans to introduce a new unified Security & Privacy settings page in Android 13 that provides a clear indicator of your safety status while also offering suggestions that will enhance your security. Google Last year, Google introduced the experience, where when you change your wallpaper, the entire Android 12 experience changes to match its colors. With Android 13, Google plans to roll out pre-made color variants that will apply a color scheme across the entire OS. The company is also extending the color-theming of app icons beyond Google apps. Starting with Pixel devices, users will be able to toggle on the “Themed apps” setting to have all supported apps match their phone’s colors. In addition, Google is introducing a new media control that tailors its look based on the music that you’re listening to. Google notes that personalized within Android 13 goes beyond aesthetics and also focuses on other areas, such as language preferences. Users will be able select different languages for each app. The new feature will be useful for people who are multilingual and use different languages depending on specific situations. “For example, you might enjoy social media in one language, but bank in another,” Google said in a . “Android 13 helps you use language as fluidly as you do in real life, so you can select a different language preference for each of your apps in Settings.” Google As for tablets, Google is building on Android 12L’s update that optimized the layout for bigger screen devices. With Android 13, Google is going to introduce better multitasking capabilities for tablets through an updated taskbar that can be used to easily switch your single tablet view to a split screen. Google is also adding palm detection, which will prevent triggering unintended actions when your hand is resting on the screen. The new feature will be useful for people who use their tablets to write or draw using a stylus pen. Lastly, Google plans to update more than 20 of its apps to be a better fit for larger screens. Many third-party apps, such as TikTok, Facebook and Zoom, will be revamped for larger screens. The company says users can find many of these new features today in the second beta of Android 13. Google also teased that there’s more in store for Android 13, such as features that “shape modern standards for audio and video like HDR video, Spatial Audio and Bluetooth Low Energy Audio.” |
Berlin-based B2B BNPL platform Mondu raises $43M Series A led by Valar in the US | Mike Butcher | 2,022 | 5 | 29 | Given the likely global recession, small businesses are reaching for new kinds of financing. Thus, the buy now, pay later business model is now expanding into this B2B world at a rate of knots. Playter has raised backing to do this, as has Hokodo, Billie and Tranch, to name a few other players. But in Germany, B2B Payments company Mondu has emerged as a significant entrant to the market. has now raised a $43 million Series A round led by U.S.-based venture capital fund Valar Ventures and will use the funding to expand into more European countries later this year. Previous investors Cherry Ventures, FinTech Collective and tech entrepreneurs and senior executives from Klarna, Zalando, and SumUp also participated. The company has now raised $57 million to date. Mondu’s BNPL for B2B solutions for merchants and marketplaces offers the main payment B2B payment options and flexible payment terms. Malte Huffmann, co-founder and co-CEO of Mondu, said in a statement: The concept of BNPL isn’t new in the B2B world; offline business trade has enjoyed it for decades. But as more companies increasingly move to digital, the need for BNPL for B2B online will grow immensely. We are on the verge of a “digitalization boom,” and Mondu wants to be part of that revolution and drive innovation within the B2B payments space. Philipp Povel, co-founder and co-CEO of Mondu, said there is a “$200 billion opportunity just in Europe and the U.S., which is bigger than the global consumer BNPL market.” Since October 2021, Mondu has signed merchant customers across industries such as beauty, cleaning and manufacturing. One example is Ionto Comed, a manufacturer in the beauty sector that supplies salons. Andrew McCormack, founding partner of Valar Ventures, commented: BNPL for B2B sits at the intersection of three huge markets that are all in transition. The B2B payments market is immense, and its transition to digital has been accelerated over the past couple of years. The B2B eCommerce market is larger than B2C but is underserved by current offerings, and supply chain financing is a growing need, particularly for SMBs. Mondu will have to expand quickly. Berlin-based Billie has raised €138.2 million so far, and Tranch in the U.K. has raised $5.6 million. |
Indonesia’s Astro raises $60M to work on 15-minute grocery delivery | Rita Liao | 2,022 | 5 | 29 | Indonesia’s sprawling archipelago has long been a headache for logistics companies, but there’s no lack of brave challengers. Jarkata-based Astro, which provides 15-minute grocery delivery, has recently closed a $60 million Series B financing round, lifting its total funding to $90 million since the business launched just nine months ago. The Series B round was led by Accel, Citius and Tiger Global, with participation from existing investors AC Ventures, Global Founders Capital, Lightspeed and Sequoia Capital India. The company declined to disclose its post-money valuation. The speed at which Astro is attracting investment goes to show the need for hefty upfront investment in the grocery delivery race, which is about establishing a logistics infrastructure quickly and locking in loyal customers ahead of rivals. Founded by Tokopedia veteran , Astro plans to spend its funding proceeds on user acquisition, product development and hiring more staff to add to its current team of 200. As in many countries around the world, on-demand delivery got a boost during the COVID-19 pandemic in Indonesia. But e-grocery penetration in the country remains low and is to be just 0.5% by 2022, compared to in 2020. That means there’s a huge opportunity for companies like Astro that are trying to prove the convenience of online grocery ordering over brick-and-mortar visits. The e-grocery delivery market in Indonesia is projected to by 2025. Astro offers 15-minute delivery within a range of 2-3 km through its network of rented “dark stores,” which are distribution hubs set up for online shopping only. The company has opted for a cash-intensive model, as it owns the entire user journey going from inventory sourcing, supply chain, mid-mile to last-mile delivery. The benefit of this heavyweight approach is that it gets to monitor the quality of customer experience. Astro currently operates in around 50 locations across Greater Jakarta, an area with 30 million residents, through a fleet of about 1,000 delivery drivers. Revenues grew more than 10x over the past few months and downloads hit 1 million, the company said. The startup is competing with incumbents like Sayurbox, and to win over users. Its customers range from working professionals to young parents at home “who seek convenience,” said Tjendra. Grocery delivery is notoriously cash-burning, but Tjendra reckoned margins will improve as the business scales. The company’s main source of revenue is the gross margin it earned from the goods sold and delivery fees customers pay. A large chunk of the business’s costs comes from delivery, which the founder believed “will come down over time as we deploy for hubs and subsequently reduce the delivery distance areas.” |
India withdraws warning on biometric ID sharing following online uproar | Manish Singh | 2,022 | 5 | 29 | India has withdrawn a warning that asked users to not share photocopies of their national biometric ID following a widespread uproar from users on social media, many of whom pointed out that this is the first time they were hearing about such a possibility. A regional office of UIDAI, the body that oversees the national biometric ID system Aadhaar, warned users on Friday that “unlicensed private entities” such as hotels and theatre halls are “not permitted to collect or keep copies of Aadhaar,” a 12-digit unique number that ties an individual’s fingerprints and retina scan, and people should avoid sharing photocopies of their Aadhaar to prevent misuse. The warning prompted an immediate and wide backlash from individuals. “I might have stayed in almost 100 hotels who kept a copy of my Aadhaar! Now this,” an individual tweeted, summing up the dilemma of tens of millions of people in the country, if not more. UIDAI has now woken up after everyone's distributed photocopies of Aadhaar all over. — Abhishek Baxi (@baxiabhishek) About 1.33 billion people in India, or roughly the nation’s entire population, have enrolled in Aadhaar, an ID system that was unveiled about 13 years ago, according to government’s official figures. This scale of adoption makes Aadhaar the world’s largest biometric identity system. Though Aadhaar has been touted as one of the world’s most sophisticated ID systems, critics have expressed concerns over the way its use case has been extended and made mandatory across several daily life services despite New Delhi marketing Aadhaar as a “voluntary” ID system. On Sunday afternoon, India’s Ministry of Electronics and IT downplayed the warning following the backlash, saying the original advisory was issued by the Bengaluru Regional Office of UIDAI in the context of spreading awareness about the potential “misuse” of a “photoshopped Aadhaar card.” “However, in view of the possibility of the misinterpretation of the press release, the same stands withdrawn with immediate effect,” it added. “UIDAI issued Aadhaar card holders are only advised to exercise normal prudence in using and sharing their UIDAI Aadhaar numbers. Aadhaar Identity Authentication ecosystem has provided adequate features for protecting and safeguarding the identity and privacy of the Aadhaar holder.” |
Why web3 companies get hacked so often, according to crypto VC Grace Isford | Anita Ramaswamy | 2,022 | 5 | 29 | On the podcast this week, Lux Capital’s newest investor, Grace Isford, joined us to talk about the opaque but crucial world of web3 infrastructure. At Lux, Isford invests in the companies working behind the scenes to make sure crypto exchanges are secure and reliable enough to avoid being hacked. Before joining Lux this February, Isford was an investor at Canvas Ventures focused on enterprise software and fintech. A data infrastructure investment she worked on at Canvas revealed to her the opportunity in the web3 space for companies to “share data immutably at scale,” motivating her pivot to crypto, she said. “That led me down the rabbit hole, and then I ended up investing myself personally,” Isford said. “I got into yield farming, which coincided with my move to New York, where many of my friends are also in the crypto and VC ecosystem.” Isford says her investing approach in web3 is rooted in what she calls her “circle of competence,” or the area where she can be competitive compared to others in the space. “NFT investing is quite different than DeFi investing, which is quite different than crypto data infrastructure investing, and I would argue that any person who says they invest in web three shouldn’t invest in all of that — they should probably choose their sweet spot in their core competency,” Isford said. Isford’s own “circle of competence,” based on her prior experience, is in enterprise and fintech infrastructure, so we asked her what she thinks some of the biggest challenges are for web3 infrastructure providers. Compared to Web 2.0, Isford said, web3 lacks enterprise-level security solutions. Alchemy and Infura are the only two major node service providers in the industry, meaning that most of crypto is reliant on two infrastructure providers to manage their data. “There seems to be a new security hack reported every week [in web3],” Isford said, citing the recent that originated from Infura and February’s . While a number of startups are working on developing security solutions, Isford said, the tech is “still quite nascent” when it comes to developer tools, data infrastructure monitoring and storage. Another major challenge is managing fraud and downside risk, Isford added. “I think [that issue] is really keeping a lot of folks out of the crypto world right now [because they’re] afraid of losing all their money if they venture too deeply into crypto,” Isford said. Isford is optimistic that through the massive inflows of investment into web3 startups in the past year, companies will be able to build more reliable solutions. “I think TRM Labs, Chainalysis and several other companies in this space have 10x potential in terms of compliance and monitoring because you just do not have that yet at scale in the same way that we’ve kind of created these sophisticated AML systems on the financial infrastructure side in the web2 world,” Isford said, referring to traditional financial institutions’ anti-money laundering technology. Better fraud and risk management systems are a precursor to more institutional money flowing into crypto, Isford said. As companies like Fidelity, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan continue to make strides into crypto, the market will mature she added. “I think one of the biggest opportunities in crypto right now is still security, if you can build more reliable smart contracts at scale … but you can’t have a reliable system if it’s not secure, right? And you can’t run a system securely if you don’t know who’s within that system, so I think security is probably one of the most important pieces from a prioritization standpoint,” Isford said. |
Should Oracle or Alphabet buy VMware instead of Broadcom? | Alex Wilhelm | 2,022 | 5 | 29 | Broadcom-VMware deal is a go. The chip giant intends to the virtualization software company for $61 billion in cash and stock, along with taking on $8 billion in VMware debt. It’s not an inexpensive transaction, but thanks to a “go-shop” provision that gives VMware 40 days to “solicit, receive, evaluate and potentially enter negotiations with parties that offer alternative proposals,” there’s market speculation that another bidder could enter the fray. After chewing through analyst notes on the deal, and wound up on opposite sides regarding whether a higher price or another bidder would make sense. Ron’s view is that the company’s value is higher than its recent financial results may imply, while Alex feels the company is not sufficiently performative to deserve a higher price. We’ve , and after Dell spun out the company, TechCrunch listed Amazon, Alphabet, Oracle, Microsoft and IBM as potential acquirers. The fact that we did not foresee Broadcom as a potential suitor underscores our view that we don’t fully grok if it’s the correct buyer for VMware. So let’s talk about the pros and cons of the matter, ask what VMware is worth, and how it may have value over and above its recent quarterly results. Ron is taking point! With $61 billion on the table, it’s hard to imagine anyone paying more, and research firm Bernstein agrees with the perspective. Before we put the idea to bed, though, it’s worth taking a moment to think about the value of VMware. VMware’s value goes beyond what its balance sheet or its profit and loss statement tells us at the moment. While the company , it has a particular set of skills that could fit nicely with any of the big cloud infrastructure providers. In fact, cloud infrastructure-as-a-service exists today only because the early crew at VMware figured out virtualization at scale in the early 2000s. Until then, people used servers, and if a server was underutilized, well, too bad. Virtualization lets you divide a computer into multiple virtual machines, paving the way for cloud computing as we know it today. While cloud computing has changed some since its early days, virtualization remains a core tenet of the market. Imagine for a moment if one of the three or four cloud vendors — think Amazon, Microsoft, Google or even IBM (although this deal is a bit rich for its blood) — brought VMware into its fold. VMware brings more to the table than virtualization, of course. Over the years, it has gained various capabilities by acquiring companies like , a containerization startup launched by Craig McLuckie and Joe Beda, two of the people who helped create Kubernetes. |
Finix goes head-to-head with Stripe | Mary Ann Azevedo | 2,022 | 5 | 29 | We’ve all been keeping up with the . Rather than rehash all that here, I’ll point you to some of our on the topic and just summarize: The two fintech startups have recently grown (much) more competitive. If things weren’t turbulent enough, another startup has very publicly emerged as a formidable competitor to Stripe: . Now, Finix is not coming out of nowhere. The SaaS startup — which started out in early 2020 by selling its payments tech to other businesses — led by Sequoia. In an unusual twist, Sequoia just 1 month later in which it reportedly wrote the self-described payments infrastructure company a $21 million check. As TC’s Connie Loizos reported at the time, Finix told employees that soon after issuing its check, Sequoia concluded that Finix competes too directly with Stripe, the payments company that represented one of Sequoia’s biggest private holdings and that in turn counted Sequoia as one of its biggest outside investors. Fast-forward to last week. Finix announced that it was becoming a payments facilitator, in addition to enabling other companies to facilitate payments. This move puts it in direct competition with Stripe, something that CEO and co-founder Richie Serna is . In an interview this past week, Serna elaborated by noting that Finix indeed started out to build software that gave any software company a way to become their own payment facilitator. “We were building technology that would take a three-year in-house build by dozens of engineers, with tens of millions of dollars of technical R&D and investment, and taking that down to a number of months by getting developer-friendly APIs to start monetizing their payments,” he said. “That was our biggest core offering. What we’ve done now is become the payments facilitator ourselves, so that we can not only provide the payments, but also all the back office requirements and compliance certifications, so that our customers can get up and running in a matter of days, rather than months.” He says the move gives Finix the ability to work with companies and software platforms who have $0 in processing volume all the way up to companies with billions of dollars in processing volume. “This allows these customers to get a better product experience and faster speed to market, and allows us to take on those non-technical aspects of rolling out and monetizing, and getting payments,” Serna added. You see, historically, companies needed to hit a certain volume threshold before Finix could work with them. But now, according to Serna, they can start working with them in their earliest states. “Customers can start working with us from day one, use finance APIs, and when they’re ready to take on more of that ownership and more of that responsibility around risk, underwriting and compliance operations, they can graduate and become their own payment facilitator,” he said, “since we’re still using the exact same APIs.” Finix has also entered what the executive described as the “card present,” or in-person, payments space. This means that it is able to provide software for many types of businesses to accept credit card payments. “If you think about a software provider for restaurants, they’re going to need a different set of devices than the device provider for gyms, or food trucks,” Serna said. “And so that’s something that we uniquely offer and bring to the market.” So, in case you haven’t figured it out, Stripe did have reason to be concerned because Finix indeed is directly competing with it. So how are they different? According to Serna, the answer lies in the fact that Finix has built “an open system and open architecture that is modular and configurable.” Stripe, on the other hand, he said, “continues to double down on that vendor lock in so it can continue to close their system and architecture.” “We think about it very similar to iOS,” Serna told TechCrunch. “We think about ourselves much more like Android…And I think we’re just going to continue to see those characteristics magnified as we continue to build our products and build our companies.” With just over 150 employees, Finix is powering over 12,000 merchants in the U.S. with its APIs today. It has raised about $100 million in funding from investors such as American Express Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures, Homebrew, Inspired Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Visa. Meanwhile, in a , Stripe co-founder John Collison told Alex Konrad, reportedly with a shrug: “We will compete with a bunch of companies, and we’ll partner with a bunch. Everyone just needs to be a grownup and well-behaved about it.” In that same article, sources told Alex that Stripe saw gross revenue of about $12 billion in 2021, up 60% year-over-year. It also reportedly posted net revenue of about $2.5 billion. that the company debuted its App Marketplace, where Stripe will provide access to both third-party apps and scripts created by app publishers, users and Stripe itself, that incorporate those apps with Stripe. It potentially represents its biggest leap yet away from payments. reportedly , or 700 jobs, this past week. The move came just after the Wall Street Journal reported that the company was going to cut its valuation in order to raise fresh capital. is believed to have across go-to-market, sales and recruiting roles. Earlier reports had cited that 100 workers would be impacted, but as details emerged, it . In mid-February, founder Ryan Breslow made headlines after announcing on Twitter that Bolt was offering every employee the chance to borrow money from the company to exercise their stock options. Now, it’s unclear what happens to the people who were laid off and borrowed money from the company. The company told Bloomberg that the number of affected workers that took out loans is in “the single digits.” . says it “is rapidly growing” after its $65 million and is hiring for more than 60 roles across its engineering, sales and customer-experience teams. The fintech says it has doubled in size over the past 6 months and intends to double again before year’s end. as operating partner at PayPal Ventures to serve as for JPMorgan Chase Commercial Banking. At PayPal Ventures, Mangot helped lead investments globally across fintech, commerce, infrastructure and crypto. are retaining their crypto optimism despite the recent market correction in the developing technology space. Mass adoption of blockchain technology and digital assets is going to happen sooner rather than later, according to Mastercard’s VP of new product development and innovation, Harold Bossé. Read more . That’s it for this week! If you’re reading from the U.S., hope you enjoy the rest of your long weekend, and for everyone else, have a great day and week ahead. And to borrow from my brilliant friend and colleague, Natasha Mascarenhas, you can support me by forwarding this newsletter to a friend or . |
How Box escaped the SaaS growth trap | Alex Wilhelm | 2,022 | 5 | 29 | for the first quarter of its fiscal 2023, the three-month period ending April 30. Box managed to beat revenue expectations, though it missed on adjusted per-share profit. Shares of the company initially lost modest ground. You might read the above paragraph and wonder why we’re digging into a SaaS company that had a quarter that appeared to be somewhat mixed in results terms and largely neutral from an investor perspective. The reason is that Box is accelerating out of a period in which over complaints about flagging growth; the company managed and is now reaping the results of the work it did while out of favor with Wall Street. Box’s revenue expansion decelerated to single-digit percentage points. Since Box went through the activist wringer, we’ve seen other public software companies with similar growth rates come under external pressure. This is what we’re calling the SaaS growth trap — a time when a company’s revenue expansion has slowed, but its profitability has not sufficiently scaled to keep investors content with its performance. Public software companies in the trap have to find a way to ignite growth without torching profitability. It’s akin to the position that many startups find themselves in today, with growth expectations staying high as private-market investors are simultaneously less interested in high-burn models. Startups have to keep the growth coming while also paying double attention to their cost structure. It’s a hard path to navigate. , though it took time. The company’s $238 million worth of Q1’F23 revenue was up 18% compared to its year-ago period, a growth rate that bested the 17% it managed in the quarter prior, and the 14%, 12% and 10% growth rates it reported in the quarters stretching back to the first quarter of its fiscal 2022. Notice the upward trajectory — it’s important. So how did Box manage to get out of the growth trap while also growing its gross margins, operating income and net profit in its most recent quarter? Let’s talk about it. It’s a lesson for public companies, yes, but also one that startups will want to understand as they navigate a more complex and demanding investment market for early-stage technology shares. |
EV SPACs are facing a new regulatory speed bump | Jaclyn Trop | 2,022 | 5 | 29 | It’s been a bumpy road for the electric vehicle startups that rushed to go public over the past two years by merging with a publicly traded shell company. Now, the SEC’s broadest attempt to crackdown on these so-called reverse mergers could put a few speed bumps on the road to becoming — and maintaining — a SPAC. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission will conclude Tuesday a 60-day public comment period on a number of , specifically around disclosures, marketing practices and third-party oversight. If approved, the barrier of entry to becoming a SPAC will rise, putting it on par with the regulatory burden placed on companies that pursue the more traditional IPO path. The rules will “help ensure that investors in these vehicles get protections similar to those when investing in traditional initial public offerings,” SEC Chairman Gary Gensler said when the proposal was first released back in March. The rules, if approved, will also strengthen protections for current investors, as well as prevent SPACs from using “overly optimistic language or over-promise future results” to appeal to potential investors. “Ultimately, I think it’s important to consider the economic drivers of SPACs,” Gensler said in March. “Functionally, the SPAC target IPO is being used as an alternative means to conduct an IPO.” The most significant change to the proposed guidelines requires aligning the financial statements required for SPACs with those of traditional IPOs, a major step toward creating more transparency. This includes more disclosure across several areas. The guidelines also call for gatekeepers such as auditors, lawyers and underwriters to be held responsible for their work, including assuming liability for the registration statements SPACs must file ahead of a target IPO. Gensler said the changes “provide an essential function to police fraud and ensure the accuracy of disclosure to investors.” While the proposal winds through the approval process, some players in the market have pressed the pause button. For instance, Goldman Sachs halted its deal-making in May as it waits to see how the new regulations will affect dealmaking, especially if the SEC revokes the so-called safe harbor protection that until now has allowed SPACs to make bullish projections. Credit Suisse and Citigroup have voiced alarm, too. “I could say I think I’m gonna make a bajillion dollars in 2025 but here are all the reasons why I might not,” said Ramey Layne, a capital markets and M&A attorney at Vinson and Elkins. “If you say that there’s a safe harbor, then you can’t be sued for that if it proves to be wrong.” The SEC’s proposed regulations are “a very big step in the right direction,” said Stanford Law School professor Michael Klausner, especially if SPACs are required to “disclose the extent to which their shareholders’ equity is diluted at the time of the merger.” The SEC expects to finalize new guidelines during the second half of 2022. Meanwhile, of the roughly 600 SPACs currently searching for a company to acquire, some deals have ground to a halt or been scrapped, according to . Allowing pre-revenue startups to take a shortcut to an IPO before selling a single vehicle has led to trouble on numerous fronts. Regulations today are so lax that commercial EV maker Electric Last Mile Solutions has for the last three and a half months. The manufacturer, which went public in June 2021 through a $1.4 billion merger with Forum Merger III, said Friday in an SEC filing that it is in , one month sooner than projected, if it doesn’t find funding. Electric Last Mile Solutions is also at risk of being delisted if it doesn’t file its delayed 2021 annual report and Q1 2022 financial report. The company blamed the delay on an acrimonious split with its accounting firm, BDO. The public spat over who had helped the EV maker’s leadership architect a scheme to buy discounted shares pre-merger — a move that led to the resignations of both the company’s CEO and chairman in February — sparked an SEC investigation into the company in March. That news sent shares tumbling below $1 and compelled the company to lay off nearly a quarter of its workforce to cut costs and pull its guidance for the remainder of 2022. Now the SPAC is at risk of being delisted from the Nasdaq if it doesn’t submit a plan by Tuesday to comply with regulations. Other examples of this laissez faire approach abound in the SPAC world. Canoo, Faraday Future, Lordstown Motors and Nikola are just a few of the SPACs that . Faraday Future also faced a Nasdaq delisting but managed to file its 2021 annual report and 2022 first quarter financial results this month. While the earnings reports staved off the delisting, they also showed a company burning through cash with little to no prospects of revenue in the near term. The company reported an operating loss of $149 million for the first quarter of 2022, compared with $19 million for the same period a year ago. The widening loss is due to “a significant increase in headcount and employee related expenses, and an increase in professional services primarily related to the special committee investigation,” the company said in a statement. Net loss increased to $153 million for the three months ended March 31, 2022, compared with a $76 million loss for the first quarter of 2021. Faraday Future also continues to have trouble getting its fantastical, 1,050-horsepower FF 91 into production. The flashy sedan can travel from 0 to 60 mph in 2.39 seconds and travel more than 300 miles on a single battery charge, the automaker said. The company recorded 401 preorders for the FF 91 as of March 31 and plans to launch the car during the third quarter of 2022, CEO Carsten Breitfeld said in a call with investors on Monday. The $1,500 preorders are fully refundable non-binding deposits, and pricing will be announced closer to launch. “Keep in mind that the FF 91 is not a high-volume car,” Breitfeld said, adding that the automaker plans to ramp up eventually to 6,000 to 8,000 units a year. About 80% of the equipment Faraday needs to build the FF 91 is at its factory in Hanford, California, and the rest is on track to be delivered. The automaker said it has funding to cover its current production run but will need more money to produce its second model, an FF 81 sedan for the mass market and a smart last-mile delivery vehicle called the FF 71. Faraday also said it signed a lease on its first store, in Beverly Hills, California and secured a dealer license to sell its cars nationwide online. |
Daily Crunch: ‘The bitcoin network is not a payments network,’ says FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried | Haje Jan Kamps | 2,022 | 5 | 16 | It’s Monday the 16th of May, and I’m back once again, like a renegade master. I’m fantastically over-caffeinated and at a standing desk today, so for the occasion, it’s a dancing desk. Because, I mean, try to sit still while listening to . This week, I’m psyched to head out to to get the full story on which cars will be driving themselves and which companies are driving into our hearts – or off the nearest cliff. Get your tickets now — we still have a few available. In other news(casts), we particularly enjoyed and ’s podcast, where they’re taking a look at how . In other news, I just re-read my TechCrunch contract, which states no superfluous obscenities are allowed, so rest assured that this newsletter only contains strictly necessary swearwords. Much love and sunbeams and such! – Every now and again, startups raise money for missions that make me worry about the current timeline we are on. Today’s installment of that theme comes from the desk of , covering WeAre8’s crowdfunding campaign for . Sure, it makes sense to get some cash for your time, but also … just, ugh. I loved this interview did with high-flying (geddit …) startup Astra. It became the fastest company in history to reach orbit in November, six years after its founding, and sooner rather than later. Developers, developers, developers: Natalia_80 / Getty Images The “Star Wars” saga is based on a storytelling structure developed by Joseph Campbell, a writer and literary professor who conceived of “the hero’s journey.” Consisting of 12 stages, his archetype calls for a protagonist who leaves ordinary life behind after hearing the call to adventure — you can imagine why it’s a popular metaphor among tech investors. According to Touchdown Ventures President Scott Lenet, Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi offered five discrete lessons for founders and investors. For example, “’I have a bad feeling about this’ is a recurring joke in the franchise — nearly every major character utters the line at one point or another,” writes Lenet. “These are also words to live by for corporate and startup leaders, because they are an emblem of awareness and proactivity.” You may not be thinking “games” when you hear Hulu, but its newest partnership with Xbox is changing that – reported it just inked a new deal that gives U.S. Hulu subscribers . Amazing name aside, perhaps it’s time to brush off my gaming rig (who am I kidding; I ain’t got time to play games. Too busy tweeting about coffee and my slowly-circling-the-drain mental health). After EU pressure, it looks like . As someone who has USB-C cables strewn around every surface, room, nook, and cranny of my house, that would work beautifully for me – but Apple has long resisted the pressure, so we’ll see what actually happens on that front. I’m sure will continue to keep us abreast of the shape of iPhone’s crevices. |
A dive into Haun Ventures with the firm’s first deal lead, Sam Rosenblum | Connie Loizos | 2,022 | 5 | 16 | Sam Rosenblum never imagined he would work at a crypto-focused investment firm. A Southern California native who spent a “large portion of my life outdoors in the sun, playing sports and hanging out with friends,” crypto was not technically a thing until he was in college at UCLA. Stints at the DOJ and as an analyst for a business consulting firm followed, but it was a subsequent year spent with Visa that opened his eyes to the burgeoning world of digital assets — so much so that when Coinbase began a recruiting push to pull in Rosenblum and some of his colleagues in 2014, two years after Coinbase was founded, he jumped at the opportunity. It was a good move. Coinbase, then a 30-person company, grew fast in the five years that Rosenblum stayed until he decided to join some other Coinbase alums at the crypto fund Polychain Capital. Indeed, armed with a network of contacts from Coinbase and Polychain, Rosenblum was preparing to raise his own fund last year when former Andreessen Horowitz VC Katie Haun reached out to see if he might join her new firm instead. Now Rosenblum, along with Chris Ahn, who previously spent four years with Index Ventures, are helping Haun invest the $1.5 billion in capital commitments that her firm — recently named — garnered earlier this year. To get a better sense of how the young firm works and how it is thinking about investing into a market right now where both stocks and crypto are being dumped, we jumped on a Zoom with Rosenblum, who lives in Sun Valley, Idaho, late last week. Excerpts of that chat follow, edited for length and clarity. SR: Katie and I first met in 2017 when she joined the Coinbase board. We didn’t keep in particularly close touch after I left Coinbase, but in November of last year, I actually set out to start my own venture fund, and so I was working on that and, of course, Katie and I have quite a few friends in common, and so some of these people I had been kind of just prepping and brainstorming with in terms of how to pitch to fund before going out to fundraise. And I think Katie caught wind that I was in process of that and then reached reached out to me, told me what she was thinking about, and I ended up flying out to Menlo Park for a couple days and we jammed together and walked a bunch of laps around the Stanford dish and decided it was a good time to team up. The rest is recent history. We’re now 12 people total — the deal team is currently three people — and I think we’ll probably keep the whole firm pretty lean and nimble. We’ll add a couple of more folks to the deal team over the course of this year but really not much more than that. I think you can imagine Haun Ventures as a 15- to 20-person firm at steady state. The strategy is obviously very crypto forward but the structure is quite vanilla. We’re a typical venture structure. We ended up deciding to close on $1.5 billion total across two funds. One vehicle is our $500 million early-stage fund, and the other is our $1 billion acceleration fund for slightly later-stage stuff. Most of our LPs are institutions, from sovereign wealth funds to university endowments to pension plans to hospital systems. And we also have some individual LPs — mostly just friends of Katie or myself, friends of the firm, so to speak. The key distinction is just really staged in the form of: how far along the project is in its development, what sort of usage there is. The idea of stage maybe looks a little bit different than in traditional tech venture. Historically, if you’re looking at a tech venture play, you’re looking at something where a big outcome would be to have a company you invested in [become a] billion- or multibillion-dollar company, and that’s true of certain companies in the crypto space that are higher up in the tech stack. But as you get lower and lower, you’re actually talking about these networks, including Layer One protocols used for a variety of things, and these networks, when you think of what is a home-run outcome, rather than thinking in the billions of dollars, you’re actually thinking in the trillions of dollars. So when we think of how to define stage for something in that category, [we’re taking into account the question of] what is the terminal size should this become a big winner? So those are some of the things that we look at. I would say a dozen or so deals at this point that span a variety of different deal deal structures or asset types. The team at Zora has been around for a couple of years, and they’ve had a couple of pretty important pivots along the way. To your point, it is one where it’s kind of funny to define what type of round it is. You can’t really give it a typical classification of Series A, Series B, whatever. It ends up just being a little bit more loosely defined. They’ve got some pretty exciting things to announce in the near future about the direction that they’re headed in, so I won’t spoil their news for them, but they are off to the races in a really cool way. Yeah, they’ve raised, and I don’t know off the top of my head what they’ve publicly said about who they’ve raised from, but it’s a great group on the cap table or investors that we work with a lot and know well. I’ve actually known the Zora co-founders since 2018 or so. The whole co-founding team came from Coinbase. The Highlight team is equally impressive, coming from the web2 world — coming places from Square (now Block) and DoorDash and other well-designed web2 products and services. Ultimately what they want us to do is set out to enable people who are not already super deep crypto engineers to enable communities with web3 tools, so it’s a no-code platform for doing just that. We are equally open to backing founders who have worked in crypto for a decade, or maybe they’ve worked in crypto for a year. What we really care about is their commitment to what they’re building and their unique insights and intuitions around exactly why they want to build it. That’s a really important question for crypto venture specifically. The general web2 landscape is one in which a founder or a startup has a very clear set of premises in terms of what they’re building on top of, things like TCP/IP, HTTP, SMTP — the dozen or so internet protocols that we all use every day. The unique thing that [founders are] setting out to do in crypto is the inverse of that, where every single layer of the tech stack is evolving in parallel. Even the most basic elements to the crypto tech stack — the idea of decentralized consensus — there’s this constant evolution of types of decentralized consensus or consensus mechanisms. So when you have truly every building block evolving, that tends to lend itself to founders and startups that probably will have to, if not pivot, at least take into account a lot of new information over the course of their startup community. We do take the idea of conflicts seriously and we do want to make sure that we are being really good partners to our portfolio founders, so we would not want to put that in jeopardy. But certainly, what we’ve already seen is founders maybe start two different startups, starting in a similar neighborhood of an idea that end up, at times, even building at different layers of the crypto tech stack. So there’s quite a bit of flexibility in the direction things have gone. You’re exactly right. That was an a16z-led deal, where Katie joined the board as part of that deal. Katie is still on the board of Royal for that, but it is not a Haun Ventures portfolio company at the moment. It’s a good question. I think all options are still open there. Digitally managed royalties and on-chain rights are super interesting and also a really challenging category. It’s very complex space. So I would presume that there’ll be quite a few really talented founders building in that general category and probably experimenting with various different approaches in terms of the markets they’re trying to serve and how they serve them. So it’s certainly a market we will continue to take a look at. At the core of the concept of web3 is this thought of decentralization, but I think a lot of people maybe have been less thoughtful where that ends up mattering and being important. In my view, centralized platforms will and should exist for certain uses. The important thing when it comes to decentralization in the crypto tech stack is that platforms do not have the ability to to “lock in” their users. Not to pick on any one web2 company, but you think of some of these social networks where every action you’ve taken — every photo you’ve uploaded, your literal social graph, your network of friends and family, is all preserved and managed by a central gatekeeper, and there’s no way to exit that information. The idea in crypto is, sure, you can have a centralized platform where you develop that content, but for something like your social graph, you can actually leave the platform and take your social graph with you because these things are all being built on an underlying open infrastructure. I’ve been working in this space since 2014. I joined Coinbase in a similar moment in time to where we are today, this week, in this current market cycle, where you probably have a three years or so slog forward of having to be heads down and building and maybe not [seeing] the euphoria that we’ve felt over the last year or so in the space. Crypto bear markets can be really hard on people for a lot of reasons, financially, psychologically, emotionally. But historically, the silver lining is that a lot of the best projects in crypto are born in moments like this. Going back a couple of cycles, you had Bitcoin’s rise in late 2013, followed very shortly thereafter by kind of a crash in early 2014. I think the Ethereum pre-sale was in June of 2014, and [that rise and fall] played out again in the 2017 and 2018 cycle, where we had peak euphoria followed by a crash. Then in 2018, some amazing projects like [the crypto exchange] Uniswap and [the decentralized margin trading platform] dYdX were founded right in that period. So I think quite literally in maybe the next several weeks to months, you’re probably going to have some new startups and new projects created in crypto that, three or four years from now, we will look back out and go “Wow, that was born out of out of this last crypto winter.” We are not. We are a vanilla, exempt venture fund. I am personally a holder of COIN and I forget who tweeted this yesterday or the day before, but someone wrote that it seemed like a generational buying opportunity for normal people who don’t necessarily have access to amazing early-stage deals to be able to invest in Coinbase at less than two times its Series C valuation in 2018. I tend to agree with that personally. I’m a personal holder of Coinbase stock and certainly would be bullish that this week is a pretty special buying opportunity. But obviously people should have to do the research they need to do to make independent financial decisions. And as a fund, we’re really not focused on the public equity markets. |
Bird changes course, drops vehicle sales in pursuit of profitability | Rebecca Bellan | 2,022 | 5 | 16 | Bird presented its first quarter 2022 earnings on Monday after the bell. Revenue has decreased consistently since the company went in November last year. As a result, Bird is looking at streamlining resources so it can achieve profitability this year. Bird’s initiatives involve focusing on its most profitable markets, potentially pulling out of less profitable markets and slowing the expansion of vehicle sales, like the or the . Bird shares fell 7.4% Monday, but then took an abrupt turn in after-market trading, shooting up more than 36.5%. Bird’s first quarter pulled in revenue of $38 million, which the company says is up 48% year-over-year. However, quarter-over-quarter, revenue is down from $54 million in the fourth quarter of 2021 and represents a continued decrease in revenue over the last three quarters – in Q3 2021, when Bird first began reporting earnings publicly, the company closed out the quarter with $65.4 million. Despite this downward trend QoQ, Bird beat its own revenue expectations of between $34 million and $36 million, as well as . Gross margins and ride profit were also down this quarter, at 9% compared to 15% last quarter and $13 million compared to $23.8 million last quarter, respectively. YoY, gross margin grew one percentage point, but ride profit grew 72% compared to $7.6 million in the first quarter of 2021. Bird managed to show a net income of $10.4 million, compared to a net loss in the fourth quarter of 2021 of $39.6 million. This is primarily attributable to $140.1 million of income that came from senior preferred stock financing, the business combination with Switchback Corporation II and its private investment in public equity financing. While this shows up as an income on the balance sheet, it’s not considered cash to be used by the company. During Bird’s earnings call on Monday, CEO Travis VanderZanden said performance early in the quarter was impacted by bad weather (which is always the case during the end and beginning of the year) and a surge in Omicron cases. This manifests on the balance sheet as fewer rides in Q1, at 7.3 million, down from 9.4 million last quarter, and fewer average rides per day per scooter. , shared rides made up the majority of Bird’s revenue, with scooter and bike sales taking only a sliver of the pie. In fact, quarter-over-quarter, revenue from sales decreased from around $9 million to $4 million, which might be part of the reason the company is pulling back from the retail portion of its business. In terms of other operating expenses, the first quarter saw Bird spend close to $85 million on general and administrative costs, which includes a stock-based compensation expense of $44.7 million. This, along with other expenses, left Bird at an operating loss of almost $97 million. The company closed out the quarter with $35 million in cash. It’s clear the continued unpredictability of the pandemic and other headwinds has sobered Bird in terms of full-year revenue projections. The company provided updated guidance, expecting revenue for the fiscal year 2022 to be between $275 million and $325 million. At the end of 2021, Bird expected full-year revenue to be at least $350 million. Despite the tough start to the year, the company is expecting ridership to pick up based on “a significant increase in demand beginning in early March as macro headwinds eased, weather improved and consumers turned to transportation alternatives such as Bird in light of higher gas prices,” said VanderZanden. “ VanderZanden said Bird expects to deliver its first quarter of positive adjusted EBITDA in the third quarter of this year, and its first full year positive adjusted EBITDA in 2023. The company is aiming for $80 million in annual run-rate cost savings for 2022, resulting in an annual adjusted operating expense run-rate of no more than $160 million. “We have already received the vast majority of the vehicles we intend to deploy in 2022,” said Yibo Ling, Bird’s chief financial officer. “As such, we believe we’re well positioned with our vehicle deliveries for the balance of ’22 and will maintain a disciplined approach to vehicle allocation.” To get on the path to profitability, Bird will be tightening its belt, dropping some dead weight and focusing on the sharing business. Or as Bird put it, the company plans to “streamline and consolidate its resourcing against its core business.” Bird did not confirm whether layoffs were in the company’s future. “We have decided to slow the expansion of our product sales portfolio offering,” said VanderZanden. “ This comes a little over a year after Bird promised . When pressed, VanderZanden said Bird would likely focus on improving and possibly expanding its sharing business in the U.S. and Europe. If the company were to consider pulling out of certain markets, we might expect that to happen in places like Canada or the Middle East in the coming months. |
Rivian founder RJ Scaringe snaps up $1M worth of EV maker’s stock | Kirsten Korosec | 2,022 | 5 | 16 | Rivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe bought 41,000 shares of company stock worth about $1 million, a posted Monday afternoon shows. The latest proxy filing, which , shows Scaringe owns 11.99 million shares of class A stock, or about 1.3%, and 7.82 million class B common stock. He also holds 4.3 million indirect shares via a trust and 4,595 indirect shares through an LLC. The purchase comes as Rivian shares fell Monday following news of a legal dispute with a seat supplier that puts its Amazon electric van program at risk and Ford’s disclosure that it has sold another 7 million of its holdings in the company. A Rivian spokesperson declined to comment on why Scaringe was buying the stock now. Rivian in November with an opening share price of $106.75, a price that made it one of the largest IPOs in U.S. history and put its market cap above GM and Ford. (At the time, GM’s market cap was $86.31 billion; Ford’s was $78.2 billion.) The company’s share price reached as high as $179.47 a week later. But a combination of general volatility in the market and material disclosures by Rivian have caused its share price to fall more than 75% since its public market opener. Ford, which held a 12% stake, or about 102 million shares, of Rivian, sold 8 million shares of the company earlier this month. That initial sale, prompted more than 17%. On May 13, Ford sold , pushing its total stake below 10%. That “below 10%” threshold means that Ford no longer has to file a Form D with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. According to the SEC’s rules, “insiders” that have to report most of their transactions involving the company’s equity securities to the SEC within two business days on Forms 3, 4 or 5. As a beneficial owner, Ford will still have to file a Schedule 13D report, which is required within 10 days of transaction, until its stake falls below 5%. |
Max Q: Near and far | Aria Alamalhodaei | 2,022 | 5 | 16 | Hello and welcome back to Max Q. In this issue: I sat down with Astra CEO Chris Kemp and Chief Engineer Benjamin Lyon to learn more about the company’s philosophy and trajectory. “The expectation I think that a lot of people have is every launch has to be perfect,” Kemp told TechCrunch. “I think what Astra has to do, really, is we have to have so many launches nobody thinks about it anymore.” How many launches? Eventually, Astra wants to achieve a daily launch cadence; in the interim, the company is aiming for weekly launches as early as next year. It’s a critical part of how the company aims to win amongst an increasingly crowded field of small launch developers — not by being flawless, but by being so low-cost and high-volume that the relative risk of a few catastrophic failures ceases to matter. Next up for Astra is a trio of launches for NASA under the agency’s TROPICS program. When Kemp discussed the launches with NASA’s Will McCarty at Astra’s Spacetech Day, he reiterated Astra’s perspective on reliability, though it veered close to sounding like a hedge: “I know the team will do everything we can to make sure all three launches and all your satellites are deployed, but it’s good to know that the price point of three launches allows NASA to enable a mission where even if only two are successful […] it is nice to know that even NASA is designing constellations so that the overall constellation performance is the end goal, not thinking about every single satellite, every single rocket launch.” Astra / John Kraus World, meet Sagittarus A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. The black hole was captured in an image for the first time, a landmark scientific achievement that’s gained a lot of media attention. But the role of simulations and synthetic data in the process has been massively overlooked. TechCrunch’s Devin Coldewey lays out how scientists used synthetic datasets and simulations to assemble the image of the black hole, “despite its relative closeness and the interference from light-years’ worth of dust, nebulae and other vagaries of the void.” Click the link above to learn more about how scientists did it. I feel like this is the only time I’ll be able to slip in a Nietzsche quote, so allow me the indulgence: “He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” EHT |
iOS 15.5 brings new Apple Cash update that lets you send and request money directly in Wallet | Aisha Malik | 2,022 | 5 | 16 | Apple users can now r The company notes that users can also continue to send and request money directly in Messages by tapping the Apple Cash button in Messages, entering the amount and then selecting Request or Pay. Apple Cash can be used with Apple Pay on iPhone, Apple Watch and iPad, or be transferred to a bank account. In addition, parents can set up an Apple Cash card for their children and easily and securely send their children money with Apple Cash Family. Parents have the ability to view their children’s Apple Cash balance and spend activity, and also apply restrictions on their spending if needed. Key among these are features for managing podcast storage across devices, tools to enable annual podcast subscriptions and the newly announced Apple Podcasts Delegated Delivery system that will soon allow creators to more easily distribute their podcasts directly to Apple Podcasts from third-party hosting providers. |
Kolkata Chai’s next cup includes a taste of venture funding | Natasha Mascarenhas | 2,022 | 5 | 16 | Co-founded by brothers and , wants to be “the place to get good chai” in the United States. It’s a big market. The Sanyal brothers estimate the national tea market represents a $12.7 billion business per year. To chase after it, the duo tells TechCrunch that Kolkata is about to embark on a new chapter of its business: after spending years bootstrapping with revenue from their agency business, Kolkata Chai is taking on external capital for the first time. The startup recently raised a $1 million pre-seed round from investors including Boba Guys founders Andrew Chau and Bin Chen, 500 Startups partner Paul Singh, Sharma Brands CEO Nik Sharma, Immi Eats CEO Kevin Lee and Vice Media co-founder Suroosh Alvi alongside investor Zanab Hussain Alvi. There are easier ways to build a business than trying to disrupt a cup of Indian masala chai. The drink is extremely personal: no two homes will serve the same cup and everyone has their own preference of ginger and cardamom proportions. But what chai demands in technique, it also receives in love: it’s a staple and shared language within Indian culture. Thus, it’s not surprising that given its cultural significance, coupled with the rising popularity of chai in Western countries, a string of direct-to-consumer businesses has emerged to launch their own masala chai mixes, bottled drinks and cafes. Kolkata’s decision to take on venture can feel like a controversial choice these days, especially with community-grown businesses that users feel passionately about. Will quality struggle with venture-like incentives? Will the chai have to be watered down? Kolkata Chai started as a New York haunt, based on the Sanyal brothers trips to Kolkata each summer. It brands itself as a no-nonsense take on authenticity, so any threat to that ethos could hurt the business. “You can bootstrap as long as you want, but there are certain limitations with that,” Ani Sanyal tells TechCrunch. “After two years of navigating COVID-19, we exhausted every kind of avenue possible; but at the same time, I think we’re intentional about how we raise capital.” Indeed, the startup says it intentionally pieced together its new round of funding from high-net-worth individuals in the form of a party round rather than from a traditional venture fund or funds. The reasoning, Sanyal continues, was that they wanted “patient capital.” Kolkata Chai didn’t go the crowdfunding route, but instead picked key executives and founders in their industry who understand the food and beverage space from whom they can learn more, including about budgeting. Ayan Sanyal added that the startup wanted to wait till the business was at a place where they felt comfortable sharing future plans and understanding what a long-term revenue mix could look like. (Kolkata’s journey is a similar feel to that of Boba Guys, a popular tea brand that also eschewed traditional venture funding.) Kolkata Chai hopes the money will help it graduate from a proof-of-concept business into a brand to be reckoned with. In the first nine months the startup’s DTC business it did about $160,000 in top-line revenue, and helped it build a profitable business through a pandemic. Based on this, Kolkata thinks its future is more in the e-commerce world. It will keep its New York store and use pop-ups as a marketing vehicle. Eventually, the brothers say, the company could expand through acquisitions and even grow through content and media that expands its initial audience. Even though the brand started by teaching people that “chai tea” was a repetitive descriptor perpetuated by Starbucks, it wants to continue to take spicier stances. “We’ve built the premier brand for millennials and our demographic with very little resources,” Ani Sanyal says. “I think we can really span across all these different worlds, and more importantly, not just [build] products and things for South Asian people but really be a bridge between our culture and the larger Western world.” Nushrat Choudhury |
Fall Guys is going free-to-play, coming to Switch and Xbox on June 21 | Aisha Malik | 2,022 | 5 | 16 | Battle royale platformer Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout is and is coming to Xbox, Nintendo Switch and the Epic Games Store on June 21, developer Mediatonic announced on Monday. The game initially launched on PlayStation and PC in August 2020 and was set to be released on Switch and Xbox last summer. A dedicated PlayStation 5 version of the game will also launch on June 21, bringing faster load times and other performance upgrades. “Whether you’re on PlayStation, Nintendo Switch, Xbox, the Epic Games Store or a mix of all of the above, you’ll be able to play Fall Guys for free — with cross-play, cross-platform parties and cross-progression fully supported with the use of your Epic Games Account,” the announcement reads. PlayStation and Steam players who already have a copy of Fall Guys will continue to receive all the usual updates, including new seasons, patches and features. Mediatonic notes that new players will no longer be able to download Fall Guys on Steam. People who are new to Fall Guys and want to play on PC will have to visit the Epic Games Store. Existing players who have purchased Fall Guys will get a “Legacy Pack” that will come with a nickname, nameplate, three costumes and access to a new premium season pass. Mediatonic Fall Guys is getting a new season on June 21 that will bring new levels, costumes, gameplay and more. Mediatonic is also going to launch a new premium season pass that can be purchased with Show-Bucks, a new in-game currency. The season pass includes 100 levels and extra costumes. Users who don’t want a season pass will continue to have access to a free progression path with items to unlock. It makes sense for Fall Guys to launch on the Epic Games Store, as Epic bought Mediatonic last year. It’s worth noting that Epic made Rocket League free to play after . Fall Guys became an instant hit in 2020 but the hype around the game has . The shift to free-to-play and launch on additional platforms should give Fall Guys a new audience. |
Prusa buys 3D-printer seller Printed Solid to expand US footprint | Brian Heater | 2,022 | 5 | 16 | Lots going on in the world of desktop 3D printers — that’s not a sentence I thought I’d be writing anytime soon. Days after , one of the companies’ most well-regarded competitors is making its own moves. Prague-based is acquiring , a Delaware-based 3D-printer reseller. Founded in 2011, Prusa shares some DNA with MakerBot and Ultimaker, as an outgrowth of the open source RepRap project. The company’s i3 system has become one of the leading FDM-based desktop 3D printers, owing to its low cost, small footprint and easy mod/repairability. Printed Solid, meanwhile, was founded in 2013 as a retailer for 3D-printing materials and parts. Three years later, the company made its own acquisition — Ranlaser — and has since begun making and selling its own printer safety enclosures. We have some exciting news to announce. — Printed Solid (@PrintedSolid) Purchasing the reseller will give Prusa a channel for extending sales to the U.S. The manufacturer’s product sales are largely confined to enterprise, government and educational customers in the States. This move will further expand that footprint to more consumer sales. MakerBot and Ultimaker also cited expanded sales channels as a key driver in their decision to merge last week. Print Solid notes in a : By Q4 of 2022 Printed Solid Inc. will acquire more warehousing, operational space and staffing dedicated to upholding and improving the already industry recognized quality and reputation of Prusa Research and offering USA based in-warranty and out-of-warranty repairs and services including parts fulfillment for Prusa Research. Helping to lessen the burden of international shipping and shortening response times for customer repairs and replacements. The Printed Solid brand will continue under its new parent, with David Randolph remaining as CEO. “[Randolph’s] amazing team will help to improve the availability of Original Prusa 3D printers, parts, accessories and services beyond the ‘big pond,'” founder Josef Prusa said in a post. “We have already started with the enterprise, government and educational sectors. In the near future, we want to offer 3D printer maintenance services to all customers in the US. Just please, everyone, be patient. We finished the acquisition and the first round of training but it will take time to get everything up and running so the team will be able to sustain the same load as we can do in our HQ.” It’s an uncharacteristically busy couple of weeks for the world of desktop 3D printing, which is now several years beyond its initial hype bubble. It’s fun to see some movement in the space, nonetheless. |
Ballooning US EV registrations raise opportunities for startups | Tim De Chant | 2,022 | 5 | 16 | are soaring in the U.S. — with registrations up 60% in the first quarter of the year — even as the country’s auto market contracted 18% as continued parts shortages constrained inventories. Between January and March, U.S. consumers registered 158,689 EVs, according to Experian. With EV volumes rising and automakers selling fewer fossil-fuel vehicles, EVs captured 4.6% of the market in the first quarter. Tesla took four of the top 10 spots, and the marque’s Model Y, Model 3, and Model S swept the top three, according to a from Automotive News. The Ford Mustang Mach-E took fourth place, and Hyundai’s Ioniq 5 and Kia’s EV6 took fifth and sixth, respectively. (Experian reports registration data because Tesla does not disclose sales figures for the U.S. only, and other automakers don’t break out sales of EV versions of certain models.) None of the recent upstarts, including Rivian or Lucid, broke their way into the top 10, though that’s not surprising. Both companies have only recently entered production on their first vehicles, which are pricey enough to limit the size of their potential market. Still, as those companies and other large firms like Volkswagen and GM begin to ramp production, consumers will soon be able to choose from a range of models at a variety of price points. That’s all but certain to drive further gains for EVs — and even more opportunities for startups to capitalize on the growth. The most obvious winners in all this will be battery technology startups. Venture capitalists and private equity firms have been closely following automakers’ growing commitments to electrification and have been . In the last five years, they’ve made nearly 1,700 investments in battery startups totaling $42 billion, according to a TechCrunch/PitchBook analysis. Three-quarters of those deals closed in the last two years. |
null | Frederic Lardinois | 2,022 | 5 | 11 | null |
There are no easy answers for tech in the aftermath of the Buffalo tragedy | Taylor Hatmaker | 2,022 | 5 | 16 | As a gunman over the weekend, the violence was, , streamed live online. The latest U.S. mass shooting left 10 people dead and raised familiar questions about how much responsibility social media companies bear in amplifying extremism that can lead to violence and in circulating footage of these deeply disturbing incidents after the fact. The 18-year-old suspect, now in custody, has been linked to a manifesto and Discord messages in which he describes being radicalized on 4chan, praises the Christchurch, New Zealand mosque shooter and lays out his plan to kill Black Buffalo residents. The shooter livestreamed the violence on Twitch, opting for the platform over Facebook because it doesn’t require viewers to log in, according to documents reviewed by TechCrunch. It’s impossible to say if the possibility of livestreaming a mass shooting might inspire a person to commit violence that they wouldn’t have otherwise, but the technology does offer extremists an audience — and an archive of their actions that have a life well beyond the initial horror. Those ghoulish legacies can , inspiring others to commit similar acts of violence. Social media platforms have for years now, leveraging the usual combination of AI and human moderators, but those systems can still fail to stop viral content from spreading and multiplying when it counts. The livestream of Saturday’s shooting was removed by Twitch within minutes, but the footage has already been copied and uploaded elsewhere. Versions of the video circulated widely on Facebook, where some users who flagged the video observed that the social network told them . A widely shared clip of the video was uploaded to video hosting site Streamable, where it was viewed over three million times before the company took it down for violating the terms of service. Facebook did not respond to a question from TechCrunch about why its moderation systems gave the video the all-clear. While the alleged shooter stated his interest in broadcasting to mainstream social media sites, he described spending the most time on 4chan, an online forum notorious for its total absence of content moderation and the extremist views that find a comfortable home there. He also spent time documenting his plans in a private Discord server, again raising the difficult questions of where platforms should draw the line at moderating private spaces. In an , New York Governor Kathy Hochul called on social media companies to monitor content more aggressively to intercept extremists. Hochul proposed a “trigger system” that would alert law enforcement when social media users express a desire to harm others. “This is all telegraphed. It was written out in a manifesto that was published on social media platforms. The information was there,” Hochul said. “They need to have algorithms in place that’ll identify very quickly the second information is posted so it can be tracked down by proper law enforcement authorities. They have the resources to do this. They need to take ownership of this because otherwise, this virus will continue to spread.” But in the case of the Buffalo mass shooting, the suspect’s plans were shared privately on a messaging app and published openly to a website known for refusing to moderate content that it isn’t legally obligated to remove. And, as many people have pointed out in the aftermath of the Buffalo tragedy, the “virus” Hochul describes . The alleged shooter was inspired to action by an ideology known as “ ” once a fringe belief espoused by avowed white supremacists that stokes racist fears about the emerging non-white population majorities in countries like the U.S. With those ideas now as easy to find on or as they are on 4chan, no algorithm can deliver us from the violence they inspire. |
Start up solo or bring on a co-founder? 4 factors to consider | Russ Heddleston | 2,022 | 5 | 16 | is unique. I find the world of startups fascinating because the desire to address a problem or need — often one you’ve struggled with yourself — is just too tempting to resist. Taking on that problem on your own as a solo founder can be daunting, but it can also be freeing. Alternatively, starting up a company with co-founders can be productive yet could have its own challenges. When I started DocSend, I never had to consider whether I wanted a co-founder, because I knew I wanted to build a company with two specific people that I liked personally and respected professionally. But for many entrepreneurs, the question of whether you can take on that challenge by yourself or want a co-founder by your side isn’t an easy one. It’s understandable why. Going solo can give you more control and freedom to lead the company the way you see fit. It also means you’re the only one responsible for pitching VCs, running board meetings, staffing a team and making major decisions. While a solo founder can bring on executives and managers to help with this work and these decisions, co-founders can balance out the leadership team. They can bring different areas of expertise, their own professional networks and share responsibility. If you are starting up a company or currently running your startup all by yourself, here are four things to consider when bringing in a co-founder (or not). Every entrepreneur should objectively assess their skills and determine if their capabilities are well-rounded enough to run a business alone. If you’re not technical and you are starting a tech company, you may need to find a co-founder who fills that gap, or at the very least a strong engineer to lead product development. Even if you’re technical and can begin coding from day one, you need to consider other key business areas and decide if bringing on a co-founder with expertise in those areas will allow you to get to a viable product, market traction and revenue faster. I reached out to my network to see how they felt about the decision. I recently spoke with Aneto Okonkwo, co-founder and CEO of Chatdesk, about why he decided to bring in multiple co-founders, and he said that different areas of expertise are a big driver. “I thought about the different functions needed to make Chatdesk successful. Since we bring together tech and personalized, human support, it was important to establish three functions: technical, operations and sales. I knew if each person could own an area, it would ensure we would achieve our mission,” he said. The number of founders on your team may also impact your fundraising success. Our analysis found that , securing an average of 42 investor meetings and raising an average of $3.22 million, compared to companies with four or more founders, which secured an average of 30 meetings and raised an average of $1.7 million. While the data show solo founders raise more funding, a holistic approach to understanding your gaps and how to fill them is imperative. DocSend |
Rivian says pricing dispute with seat supplier threatens Amazon van program | Kirsten Korosec | 2,022 | 5 | 16 | Rivian filed a complaint against Commercial Vehicle Group, alleging that the supplier violated a contract and nearly doubled prices on a custom seat package bound for the electric vans it’s producing for Amazon and potentially other commercial customers. WSJ was the , which was filed March 9 in the Wayne County Court in Michigan. Commercial Vehicle Group claims in a court filing that it isn’t contractually obligated to the initial agreed-upon price. Rivian warned in the complaint that if the dispute is not resolved it may be forced to shut down the commercial van program, causing imminent and irreparable harm to the company and its other suppliers. News of the complaint sent Rivian shares down 7% Monday. Rivian is producing the R1T electric pickup truck and R1S SUV for consumers. It also has a contract with Amazon, which owns about 18% of Rivian, to supply the e-commerce giant with 100,000 electric vans by 2030. Rivian also plans to begin selling its electric delivery vans to other commercial customers in 2023. Production of the Amazon-Rivian Prime Van, or RPV, would be delayed if a new supplier had to be found for the custom package, which includes the seat, surrounding trim and jump seat, Rivian states in the initial complaint. Rivian added that the seat package includes “safety-critical” components that require well over a year of testing before Rivian can validate them in production vehicles. A Rivian spokesperson said CVG has continued to supply seats to Rivian, and the parties are discussing a resolution. Rivian claims in the complaint that Commercial Vehicle Group was supplying the company with the seat packages at the agreed-upon price. In February that changed and Rivian alleges CVG “held its supply hostage and threatened to stop shipment of all seat packages to Rivian” unless the automaker agreed to pay about twice the price. Rivian did issue orders “under protest” for seat packages at the higher price to avoid supply interruption. However, the complaint alleges that CVG refused to honor those spot purchase orders until Rivian agrees to release CVG of any breach of contract claims. A motion hearing is scheduled for May 17, according to the court. |
Melbourne-based Blinq wants to make paper business cards obsolete | Catherine Shu | 2,022 | 5 | 16 | Business cards feel almost as outdated as Victorian calling cards, but they are still a networking staple. Melbourne-based wants to do away with them altogether. The app generates a QR code that shows your professional info, including social media links, as soon as someone scans it, even if they don’t have the app installed. The company announced today it has raised $5 million AUD (about $3.5 million USD) from Blackbird and Square Peg Capital. A Blinq profile can also be shared through NFC cards, short links, email signatures and video call backgrounds. Users have the option of creating multiple profiles so they can control who sees what information, like their company websites, Calendly and LinkedIn. It integrates with CRM platforms and directories like Salesforce, HubSpot and Azure AD. Founder and CEO Jarrod Webb was an early Uber Eats operator and software engineer when he created Blinq in 2017 as a hobby. At that time, Uber Eats had changed its logo a couple of times, Webb told TechCrunch, and his job title also changed twice, so he had stacks of different business cards on his desk. “It made me realize paper business cards have two big flaws,” he said. “Information is static and you had to carry them around.” Around the same time, iOS 11 was released, giving iPhones the capability to scan QR codes natively through the camera. Over a weekend, Webb built the first version of Blinq, a simple app that allowed users to create a digital business card and add a QR code that they could add to their iPhone widget screen. While Blinq worked between iPhone users, it was only in late 2019 that most Androids could scan them natively, Webb adds. QR codes saw more adoption during the COVID pandemic, and in January 2021, Webb left his job to focus on Blinq after several businesses contacted him, asking for a way to manage cards for all employees. “Prior to QR code scanning from native phone cameras, there have been many digital business card apps, but none have really stood the test of time because they weren’t able to serve a great experience the first time two people met, either because they relied on both people already having the app installed to be able to receive details or because the transfer time was too long,” Webb said. Blinq relies on a product-led growth strategy. Most of its growth is from users sharing their Blinq card with people they meet, including at conferences, who then in turn create their own Blinq cards. In a prepared statement, Blackbird partner Rick Baker said, “The last time Square Peg and Blackbird co-invested in a seed-stage startup, the result was Canva. With many social networks leading to a fragmentation of identity, Blinq is creating a way to help people manage, control and share their identities in one place. We see such an exciting opportunity with what Blinq is building.” |
Twitter CEO and Elon Musk clash over bot-battling metrics | Devin Coldewey | 2,022 | 5 | 16 | Twitter is full of bots, this much we know. But how full, and what kinds of bots? With estimates ranging from Twitter’s own “under 5 percent” to independent researchers suggesting 20% or more, it’s clearly a tricky number to nail down, as the company’s CEO, Parag Agrawal, explained in a thread today. Prospective buyer Elon Musk with a poo emoji. Agrawal pointed out that spam and bots that all social media platforms contend with, and more importantly they are an evolving and “dynamic” one. “The adversaries, their goals, and tactics evolve constantly — often in response to our work! You can’t build a set of rules to detect spam today, and hope they will still work tomorrow.” The problem of figuring out whether an account is is non-trivial, yet millions of accounts are actioned in some way, and as on other platforms, usually before they even do anything. One reason it’s difficult to gauge whether an account is “real” or not, for whatever definition of “real” you choose to apply, is that there’s a limited amount of information available publicly. As Agrawal notes: “The use of private data is particularly important to avoid misclassifying users who are actually real. FirstnameBunchOfNumbers with no profile pic and odd tweets might seem like a bot or spam to you, but behind the scenes we often see multiple indicators that it’s a real person.” By “private data” he likely means things like direct message activity, logins and browsing behavior that are invisible to anyone viewing from the outside but clear to the internal systems. Many Twitter users engage with the platform silently, and who can blame them? This is convenient for Twitter because no one can verify the numbers it puts out. Though there’s little reason to think the company is outright fabricating or doctoring the numbers here, it’s inarguable that they have motive and opportunity to do so in subtle ways that would only be visible to an auditor with access to the same data they do. The question of user authenticity, of course, goes right to the heart of a social media platform’s reach and ability to monetize, and we’ve seen over and over that falsifying or misrepresenting these numbers can have serious effects on the willingness of advertisers and premium services subscribers to pay. Or, as billionaire and hopeful Twitter owner Elon Musk put it: “💩” His follow-up question, “So how do advertisers know what they’re getting for their money? This is fundamental to the financial health of Twitter,” is a baffling one. As someone ostensibly interested in running a social media company, it’s difficult to believe that he would not have performed some basic due diligence on the types of metrics that the industry uses to keep track of these things. After all, as Agrawal points out, these numbers have been reported regularly for a long time. It’s not that the question is a bad one, it’s just odd that he would ask it here and now, after making a very risky buyout offer of the business — a business of which he seems to not understand the elementary operations. Companies like Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat and others that monetize engagement have been defining and redefining “how advertisers know what they’re getting for their money” for a decade. And long before that, of course, there has always famously been a disconnect between advertising and results — the old, “half works and half doesn’t, but no one knows which half is which” conundrum. The most pertinent question here does not seem to be “how do we know engagement is authentic?” but rather, why has Elon Musk only begun looking into this now? It’s a bit like buying a horse and then looking up “horse” in the dictionary. The seeming lack of familiarity not just with the complexities of Twitter but with the way the social media ad market and authenticity metrics are defined and handled in general will surely only add to the worries of those who fear Musk is far from the best person to lead the company. |
Flexxbotics puts work-cell manufacturing on cloud nine | Haje Jan Kamps | 2,022 | 5 | 16 | In manufacturing — and especially in the space of contract manufacturing, where production lines are reconfigured to suit the product that’s being built — we’ve seen a prevailing trend from super-specific automation robots that are custom-built to do just one thing, toward more generalized, multi-purpose robots. just closed a $2.9 million round to leap into the production line, to rock its body in time (okay, I believe you) The Boston-based company is bringing to the cloud, with a SaaS solution aiming to improve manufacturing and the management thereof. The platform connects enterprise business systems with the manufacturing floor for increased transparency. The tool itself is a no-code platform that focuses on process control, capturing operations data and assisting with the more automated setup of individual work cells. The company was founded by a pair of Tylers in 2018 — Tyler Bouchard wearing the CEO hat, and and Tyler Modelski with the CTO hat, presumably a fashionable baseball cap with the Flexxbotics logo embroidered on it. Flexxbotics is a spin-out from Northeastern University by ways of . The company launched its first set of robotic productivity tools in 2020, and today, the company claims these are used in close to 100 companies world-wide. “Flexxbotics is focused on the mission of helping discrete manufacturing companies complete the digital transformation. These companies have struggled with the challenge of connecting ERP, MES and other modern business systems with the legacy production equipment on the shop floor,” says Bouchard. “Our vision is to change that by providing a turnkey tool kit to seamlessly connect robots, CNC machines, PLCs and other manufacturing with each other through a shop floor communications mesh.” The Series A financing round was led by . The group focuses on early-stage companies developing advanced technology solutions. According to Peter Schroer, a member of eCoast Angels, “Flexxbotics was appealing to us as investors because they are taking a novel approach to connect information from business systems directly with the devices/machines in shop floor workcells. This has long been a critical gap for manufacturing companies and we expect rapid adoption of their product in the coming months as the company rolls out its new technology.” |
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